Glory
by Eiruiel
Summary: Someone wakes up on the wrong side of the wrong bed... in the wrong body. Things are probably going to get worse. SI OC fic. / Now discontinued. Please make your way over to its rewrite, "Glory Rewritten."
1. Age 5: Introductions: Part 1

**Published: 6/26/2014**

**Edited: 10/20/2014 for a title change and author's note.**

* * *

**Age 5: Part 1  
**

_"I remember this part. They made me carry you up the stairs... I was stuck watching you the whole day while they were taking care of everyone else. You were such a little princess."_

_"Hey, stop it! Don't _tell_ them—I cut that part out for a reason!"_

* * *

I would like to open this narrative with the declaration that it had never been my intention to kill the five-year-old girl whose body I now inhabit. This possession was totally and utterly out of my control. I do not know how this occurrence came to be and I have done nothing to abet its happening because I am not a baby killer.

That is all.

...

Well, no, it's really not. If that had been it, it wouldn't have been worth putting this all together. I want to accomplish more with this than just letting people know I don't murder children for fun. I have a story to tell.

But with all that said, you're probably wondering what I'm on about. What do you mean, "possession"? What was that about baby killing? Is there going to be context to the intentionally vague story summary at all?

Yes, there will be, don't worry. Though really, the summary is pretty self-explanatory: someone (me) woke up on the wrong (far left) side of a bed (futon, technically) that was not hers and found that she suddenly had the body of a stranger (the little girl). That part's easy to explain. What you really want, I think, is for me to tell you what happened after.

And I will. I'll tell you. This is a story that I want people to hear—_my_ story. The story of how I grew up, of how I lived and loved and lost. The story of how I learned what truly matters.

Now make yourselves comfortable and let me tell you about this girl...

* * *

Sunday, January 25th, years before the birth of Naruto Uzumaki. Everything started on that day, and in all honesty, I wouldn't have much problem labeling it as the most important day of my life.

That was the day I became Misuzu Namikaze.

Little Misuzu—or just Suzu, as she was usually addressed—was a parentless child of the clan Namikaze. She lived in a quasi-orphanage that most of her kinsmen simply referred to as the "House," a large traditional Japanese home located in the center of the Namikaze compound. This House was the residence of seventeen other orphaned children, whose ages ranged from three months to seventeen years, and was headed by the fearsome Reiko Namikaze and her husband Souhei.

(I call her fearsome because she's a career mother, and everyone knows mothers are forces not to be trifled with—ninja mothers especially.)

The House was crowded, but clean and well-funded. As far as orphans go, Suzu had it good: she was well-fed and well-cared for, had lovely parent figures, an abundance of playmates, and, most notably, a marvelously stable home life. Not something to sniff at, not when ninjas were involved.

When I first woke up in her body, it didn't really register right away. It's hard to describe what it felt like. That's the thing about switching bodies; you don't realize it. It just works—if all of a sudden it's yours and you're in it, there's no reason for it to feel foreign. It's just _you. _My limbs functioned just fine—no stumbling due to shorter legs—and I spoke the local language just as well as you would expect a five-year-old to. In fact, everything went so seamlessly that I didn't realize anything was off until I was already sitting at the breakfast table, surrounded by small blond children.

The first thing that came to my mind when I blinked and became aware of my surroundings was _Japanese_. Though all of the people around me—wow, this place was crowded—were blond-haired and blue-eyed, their facial features were very East Asian. Almost everyone had angled faces and narrow eyes. The house, too, fit the bill: the table we were sitting at was very low to the ground, we were all sitting on dark blue cushions, and the floor was a distinctive tatami mat. I could tell from where I was that the doors were the sliding kind, and there was a large banner hanging on the wall that was covered in symbols I couldn't read. Kanji, I knew intuitively. But I didn't actually know any yet, it seemed, except for the one that read "heaven" near the bottom.

"Food's ready!" a voice announced, snapping me out of my observations. A woman in an apron approached the table, balancing two trays covered in black lacquer dishes—also very Japanese—in her hands, followed by a man and a teenager carrying similar burdens. They handed the food to the girl at the opposite end of the table, who took a plate and passed the tray down. The process was repeated for the rest of the food, and when all was done I was staring a breakfast of fish, miso soup, rice, some miniature omelet things, and something I somehow knew was steamed bamboo shoots.

Oh, yeah. _Definitely_ Japanese.

There was a chorus of "itadakimasu" and then breakfast was underway. Everyone looked cheerful as they dug in, and I got the feeling that most meals here were chatty and relaxed rather than formal and quiet. I counted twenty people in total: two adults, three teenagers, four tweens, a whopping _seven_ toddlers, myself included, and four slobbery babies. Eyeing the woman and the man who looked to be her husband in disbelief, I wondered how it was possible for someone to live under the same roof with such an insane amount of prepubescence. And _four_ babies? I had had a new cousin a little while ago and just _one_ of him had been enough send the whole household batty. How the hell were these guys managing?

But manage they did. I watched, awed, as the couple inhaled their food in record time and set to feeding the infants even as they were diffusing an oncoming food fight and happily replying to the children's screaming chatter. _And _they were laughing and talking together the whole time as if they weren't drowning in a mass of attention-seeking minors. It was astounding.

Good Lord. Ninja parents.

...

I froze with my food halfway in my mouth. Wait a moment. Had I just thought—_ninja_ parents? Like, shuriken-throwing fire-breathing water-walking ninjas? I looked at them again.

They were a perfectly domestic pair. The woman's hair was bound in a messy bun, her face looked smooth and rather pretty, and she still had her apron on; the man was wearing a plain dark blue shirt and black pants. They didn't have crazy battle scars or anything, nor did they have tattoos: they looked like totally normal people to me. But no, there it was again—the very sight of them had my mind screaming _ninjas._

And then, just like that, I suddenly knew. They were ninja, this was a ninja clan, I was in a ninja village, and they were all from the story Naruto.

I must have scared them when I plunged face-first into my food in a dead faint.

* * *

**A/N EDIT: New author's note, because I didn't like the old one.**

**Welcome, everyone, to Glory, the story of a bumbling idiot who became a ninja and wrote a book about it. She has many inner monologues and can get quite meta; she will often address you to your face, directly. Bear with her and all of her quirks. I'm actually rather fond of her.**

**There's not much else to say, really. I won't tell you what to think, so... read on, friends. Form your own opinions!**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	2. Age 5: Introductions: Part 2

**Published: 6/30/2014 **

* * *

**Age 5: Part 2**

_"Hey, this is the part where we meet, isn't it?"_

_"Yeah, it is. I'd never leave it out."_

_"...It'd be nice if he were still around to see it."_

_"...Yeah. It would."_

* * *

I'd had a lot of expectations when I first met Minato. He'd been my favorite character in all of Naruto, hands-down; not only was he an uber cool badass and a great ninja, he was a prodigy genius who was really friendly and polite to boot. He was responsible, too, and clever, and overall just a super awesome person.

Thing is, though, expectations don't always equate to reality. People are what they are, not what you think they should be. And Minato? Sure, he was a badass genius ninja… sometimes. But no one is a totally flat character, and that means that the rest of the time he was a major, major dork.

"So I asked her, 'Why is _Super Ultimate Soaring Dual Dragons of Divine Water and Heavenly Lightning Strike of Power_ no good?' But she just laughed at me!" Minato exclaimed, emotively thrusting his soapy washrag into his bucket. The subsequent splash achieved an impressive distance; I observed with careful detachment that the area around him was looking worse than it had when we'd started.

"I dunno," I replied, resisting the urge to bang my head on the floor as I began picking at a particularly stubborn spot of dirt.

Minato, who had been made to watch over me the whole day after my fainting spell, had asked only one thing of me in return for his kindness: that I help him with his chores. I had agreed immediately, feeling horrendously guilty that he had spent the entirety of the 25th—his _birthday_—sitting in a small room next to a knocked-out toddler. With that said, though, he wasn't angry or anything; in fact, he was actually rather pleased that I'd known it was his birthday at all. At the House, apparently, birthdays are almost always celebrated at least a week late.

"And I was so looking forward to showing it off at the Academy's ninjutsu exhibition, too," the future Yondaime sighed ruefully, half-heartedly swishing water around the floorboards. It was astonishing how much of a lazy teenager he looked like just then.

"Why don't you just change it a bit?" I asked, picking up my own bucket and nudging him over, knowing that a speedy intervention was going to be needed if I wanted to save the sitting room floor from drowning. "Like… I don't know, make it _Divine Dual Dragons_ or something like that."

"Alliterative," Minato noted appreciatively as he scooted to the side. "But you don't think Kushina will laugh at that?"

"I think it'll be okay," I replied, just a smidge dryly. It suddenly occurred to me that I was technically older than Minato, who had just turned sixteen. "Besides, it's the effectiveness of the jutsu that counts, not the name, right?"

"Yeah," my cousin laughed a bit sheepishly, rubbing his neck, "I guess it is. Huh…" He paused a moment before turning to look at me. "Have you always been this clever, Suzu-chan?"

There was suddenly an alarming amount of sharpness in his gaze.

"Uh," I gulped, taken aback at his unexpectedly intense scrutiny; I decided now was a good time to give the floor a nice, vigorous scrub. "I-I guess..."

"Hmm," Minato murmured pensively, sitting back on his haunches and examining me at me with a scarily analytical eye.

I held back a cringe. Oh, I see how it is. He's only crazy smart when circumstances are against you. It figured.

"Hey, you two! Are you done yet?" came Auntie Reiko's distant call, interrupting my exasperation. "You've been in there the whole afternoon! If you're not finished by the time everyone else gets back…"

"Eek," I said, deciding that a cringe wasn't so inappropriate now.

"Let's get going," Minato shuddered, getting back on his knees and beginning to clean in fevered earnest. "I want to live to see dinner."

"Ditto," I agreed.

* * *

So that was how I made friends with my cousin, Minato Namikaze. Minato, like everyone else at the House, was an orphan: his parents had died on a mission when he had been two. At age sixteen, he was not only the beloved big brother of the many House children, but the pride of the clan—he was the youngest Jounin in the history of the Namikaze.

The Namikaze, as I gathered, were a very minor ninja clan that put out competent but mostly average shinobi. Unlike the noble clans like the Hyuga or the Aburame, or even regular clans like the Nara, we had no particular specialization; our people just did whatever they were best at. We weren't particularly inclined to ninjutsu or genjutsu, either, so our hereditary chakra reserves were only slightly larger than normal.

Oh, but we did have our own taijutsu style: Hurricane Gale. The first clan head had devised it because Namikazes tended to be skinny like toothpicks and were naturally disadvantaged in hand-to-hand combat; its main focus was drawing power from the lower body, redirecting and using opponents' energy against them, and moving in circles. If properly executed, it was, apparently, very effective against multiple opponents, and could be used for extended periods of time due to its lack of need for brute strength.

At least, that's what I was told. Information like this was constantly being dumped on me nowadays because it seemed that I was due to start at the Academy this April. The week of my arrival had actually been the first week of my lessons with Auntie Reiko, who was in charge of educating the House's children in the clan arts.

(My God, was there nothing that woman could do? She was the ultimate supermom.)

For the most part, though, my days were rather peaceful, full of games and family and regular five-year-old stuff. Kids here had a shocking amount of freedom; as long as our daily chores were completed, House rules allowed us to go out into the village on our own whenever we wanted, so long as we returned home before dinner.

Was that an effect of being from a ninja clan, or was that just the tone of Konoha in general? I couldn't tell. It had been just two days after I'd gotten here and it felt like I'd been a citizen of the village all my life… not that that was a bad thing. In fact, I rather enjoyed myself. A second childhood was something I knew people would kill to have, and it was easy to see why. That sort of carefree life where your only concerns were to eat, sleep, and play… you couldn't appreciate it until it was over.

In that vein, three months passed in a flash. Before I knew it I was in an Academy classroom, being assigned a seat. First-year students, it seemed, weren't allowed to pick their own seats, and were placed in alphabetical order.

The Academy didn't look like it had changed much between now and Naruto's time. The classrooms were large and lecture hall-styled, with a podium for the teacher to speak at at the bottom. The floors were hardwood and the doors slid; the windows were the latched kind that rotated outwards. For a ninja school, things were surprisingly colorful: there were several posters and pictures on the walls displaying different rules and ninja platitudes.

I suppose here is where I should go into all the different people I met and how special they were, but I won't. There weren't any particularly inspiring teachers or cool senpai for me to talk about, anyway. As far as I was concerned, only two people I met in the Academy really mattered: Akihiko Namikaze and Yoshiya Miyazawa.

I'd met the former of the two by virtue of being seated next to him. Nothing fostered friendship like consistent casual contact, after all, and honestly? It would have been harder to not be his friend. Akihiko was incredibly amiable and had no trouble inviting me to do things like play games or eat lunch with him; by time the first week was over, we were bonafide buddies. Yoshiya, being Akihiko's best friend, quickly became mine by extension.

Akihiko was—obviously—a clansman of mine. He dressed in blindingly bright red and was quite loud, which made me wonder how I'd ever missed him, considering the fact that we lived in the same few acres of village space. He had the standard Namikaze coloring and stature—that is, blond-haired, blue-eyed, and twig-like—and his hair, which was gravity-defying, spike-forming, and somewhat left-leaning, marked him as a member of the wind branch.

(The Namikaze clan didn't have a hierarchy or anything, but there were two branches: the wave and wind branches. People from the wave branch—my branch—were typically water-natured and straight-haired. The wind branch—the one that both Akihiko and Minato were from—usually produced spikey-headed wind users. Of course, with that said, there were exceptions to each of those generalizations; chakra natures and hair types bled over all the time.)

Yoshiya was not from a clan, but his father was a second generation ninja, so he had some training. He was positively plain by comparison to his best friend; his dress sense was already low-key—he usually wore earthen colors—and that, in combination with his dark brown hair and murky green eyes, made his appearance utterly unremarkable. He was horribly shy and quiet, too, and hated drawing attention to himself.

I guess opposites really do attract. Even their talents were in sharp contrast: where Akihiko had already begun training in the fourth (!) level of Hurricane Gale, it was apparent Yoshiya was a blooming ninjutsu prodigy—he had already been spitting out mud balls for fun by the time I'd met him.

Honestly, they both had me outclassed from the very start. Yoshiya was ten times smarter than I had been at this age, and Akihiko was insanely athletic. I mean, after all, he was on the fourth level of Hurricane Gale—he was essentially a toddler with an orange belt.

What was with the Narutoverse and incredibly precocious children? Back home kids like these were so rare you could hardly believe they existed at all, but here it was like everyone and his mom was a prodigy. Something about ninja society must encourage a drastically early maturation, I mused as the teacher got up and dismissed us for lunch.

"Let's play ninja!" Akihiko all but screamed as soon as our Chuunin sensei left; there was an immediate—and chaotic—mass exodus out to the playground, where a crowd of children promptly gathered around, clapping and cheering.

Well. Maybe not too mature, though.

We were split into two teams to play nukenin and oinin, the ninja equivalent of cops and robbers. Each player produced his own set of cardstock shuriken, and those of us from ninja clans had a wooden kunai or two to arm ourselves with. Bendy-straws were taken from juice boxes to be assembled into headset mics for hunter-nin usage; a packet of post-its were liberated from the teacher's desk and rationed out as explosive tags, two per person. The area under monkey bars was designated as village T&amp;I.

The rules were as follows: three jailbreaks per person. Only three uses of ninjutsu were allowed in a game. If you took any injuries to the legs, you had to walk until you healed. You could only take five hits from the shuriken before you were dead; if you were stabbed in the neck, chest, or stomach with a kunai, you were dead; if you used a fourth ninjutsu, you were dead; if you were stuck in T&amp;I for longer than two minutes, you were also dead.

Predictably, the game ended when all members of a single team were dead.

(Here I make a clever comment about being dead and the games of ninja children.)

Akihiko and I ended up being comrades in defection, but Yoshiya was on the other team, which honestly did not bode well for any of the nukenin. The hunter-nin knew this and immediately designated him as mission control, well aware of his strategic brilliance.

"Missing-nin have one minute to hide!" the jailer announced.

The other kids dutifully covered their eyes. Akihiko took off, clutching his kunai in one hand, dragging me behind him with the other. We ran past a couple of kids who were ducking behind the slides, heading straight for the tree with the swing.

"Hold that!" Akihiko ordered once we reached it, releasing my hand and pointing at the wooden board swaying gently in the breeze.

I went over and kept it from flopping around; he wasted no time in jumping on it and scrambling up the rope like a monkey. After that, with a ridiculous amount of upper body strength that no young child should have, he hauled the seat up while I was still on it so I could reach the lowest branch. When I made it onto the same bough as him, he tossed it back down before motioning for me to climb higher. I followed him easily into the tree's obscuring heights.

Playground safety? Pshaw. This was the Hidden Leaf Village—kids were _born_ climbing trees.

"Ready or not, here we come!" came the collective shout of our opponents.

Yoshiya immediately sprung into gear, green eyes bright, head whirring with plans and possibilities.

"Watanabe and Kamizuki, you guys go check the playground!" our friend began, thrusting a finger to his left. "Ota, go with them! Everyone else, come here, I have a plan…"

As some secret course of action was whispered into our classmates' ears, Akihiko tensed.

"If they find us, you go to that branch over there," he told me quietly, pointing over his shoulder at a particularly long limb. "You can cross over to the Academy roof and then jump from the awning."

"What are you gonna do?" I asked, maintaining the hushed tone, going one branch up so I could climb over him.

"I'll drop down and fight them," he declared, flashing his kunai with a brawny grin. "You can be a surprise attack if I need it."

I almost protested the idea of turning to a fight first thing—running was much more in my nature—but then I stopped and considered it. It was just a game, after all. What could he possibly do?

But the answer, disturbingly enough, was quite a bit. Akihiko was trained in martial arts, after all, and hadn't he just shown me he was strong enough to lift me ease? He could beat the crap out of our classmates if he wanted to. I felt a sudden shudder crawl over my skin, and the thought came to me unbidden: _child soldiers, even on the playground_.

I froze. For a moment, my gaze was taken over by a horrible vision of my classmates savagely brawling to the death, stabbing each other as bloody red mist settled in the background…

"Suzu?" Akihiko asked, peering up at me curiously.

"Huh?" I snapped out of my daze, coming back to the feel of the warm Fire Country sun dancing across my cheeks. A pleasant breeze blew through my bangs, rustling my clothes as the leaves around us fluttered.

...That had been vivid. _Way_ too vivid. And… way too easily imagined.

"You okay?" my friend queried, pulling himself out of his crouch so we were face-to-face. His round cheeks were flushed a pleasant pink, blue eyes round and inquisitive. I suddenly felt sick.

"Yeah," I muttered, reaching up for another branch and pulling myself away.

Playing ninja wasn't as fun as usual that day.

* * *

That afternoon, instead of heading straight home to play with my cousins at the House as I usually did, I went walking in Konoha.

As I looked around, taking in my surroundings, I noticed one thing: everyone was smiling and happy, cheerfully going about their daily business. There were women in pretty yukatas with baskets on their arms, shopping and hunting for bargains... men in sweaty white shirts, laughing at some crude joke while hauling a cart of lumber behind them… ninjas in flak jackets sipping tea at the teahouses, chatting idly as they shared stories and caught up one another. Everything was superbly peaceful.

These people had built their entire lives on the innocence of thousands. They _required_ children to go out and sully themselves, forcing them into the military and making them become soldiers, hiding reality with pretty tales of honor and glory. And _no one was bothered_.

What was _wrong_ with this place?

"Ouch!" I exclaimed as my forehead smashed into something hard, thoroughly derailing my troubled train of thought and sending me flying back onto my butt. Well, I thought dizzily, that's what you get for not paying attention...

"Whoa!" a voice exclaimed. I looked up reflexively and found myself staring up into a pair of hazel eyes, framed by dark brown lashes. I stared; they were old eyes, hinting faintly of a repressed sorrow, piercing and bold but fragile at the same time...

"You okay, kid?" a pair of fingers snapped in front of my face, snapping me out of my fascinated stupor. A young man was squatting in front of me, dressed in a commoner's garb, a straw hat sitting slightly askew atop his brown hair. A short ponytail flopped over his shoulder when he offered his hand.

"You need watch where you're going," he told me with a slight frown, pulling me to my feet and setting down his burden, a brown crate full of fruit.

I looked at him dumbly.

"Kid," he peered down at me, looking faintly concerned at my lack of response, "you're bleeding…"

I blinked and touched my forehead; sure enough, my hand came away sticky and red. The man clicked his tongue with grimace.

"Eech, I hope that looks worse than it actually is," he told me, bending down to get a closer look at the wound before straightening up and turning toward the store he'd just exited. "Stay there, I'll go grab some gauze…"

A minute passed before he was back with a white square and a roll of medical tape; he gently wiped the blood off my head with a wet cloth before carefully fixing the dressing on it.

"All better," he grinned, clapping my shoulder after he had placed the tape and cloth behind the fold of his shirt. "You should be good to go, though make sure you tell your parents what happened. They might want to take you to a doctor."

Wow, this person... was really nice. Going to all the trouble of cleaning and dressing the wound of some random kid? Not many people would do that. I broke into a smile and opened my mouth to thank him.

"Mister, nobody cares we're training to be child soldiers," I informed.

He stared.

...Okay, maybe I did need a doctor, because that was _not_ what I meant to tell him. Ugh, I mentally smacked myself, you moron! All you needed to do was give him a simple "thank you," and what do you do?

"Uh," the man said, looking at me like I'd grown another head.

I felt my face flush bright red. Oh, Lord, why was I such a weirdo? Maybe I'll just run…

"...You wanna come in?" he asked just as I'd lifted my feet to start sprinting. He pointed to the shop. "I'll make some tea."

And that was how I ended up sharing tea and dango in a fruit store with a stranger I met at the shopping district.

"My name's Itsuki Mikawaya," he told me, pulling his hat off and settling behind the counter with a stick of dumplings. "What's yours?"

"Suzu Namikaze," I replied, swinging my feet. He'd given me a stool to sit on.

"Well then, Suzu-chan," Itsuki began, eyebrows rising, "what was that about child soldiers?"

I blushed, feeling my shoulders hunch in embarrassment.

"Er, well…" I mumbled. "It's just, um, you know… I'm a little kid training to kill people and no one thinks it's weird."

Itsuki stared at me again, taking a long sip of tea to hide his expression. I fidgeted, resisting the urge to find something to hide behind.

"...That's a surprisingly civilian thing for a clan kid to say," the brunet finally replied, setting his drink down and giving me a scrutinizing look. "You're pretty observant for a kid."

"Uh… Konohagakure, get your prodigies a dime a dozen?" I offered as humorously as I could, smiling nervously.

He just looked confused again.

"What's a dime?" he asked.

I resisted the urge to slap myself. There _had_ to be a limit to one's own idiocy, but it seemed mine was still way up there...

"Never mind," I mumbled, just about ready to die of mortification. "I… have a weird sense of humor."

"...Right," Itsuki said slowly, eyebrows nearly at his hairline.

I buried my face in my hands. There was a moment of silence. Then...

"Does it bother you?" Itsuki asked.

I looked up.

"Eh?" was my eloquent response.

"Does it bother you that no one cares?" he clarified, making a circular motion with his free hand, as though he was encompassing the village and all of the people in it with a gesture.

"Of course it does," I replied, incredulous. Why else would I have been distracted enough to ram my face into a wooden crate? "Kids go out and kill for the village all the time, and everyone's just happy to leave things the way they are. How could I not be bothered?"

Itsuki looked thoughtful now. Sympathetic, even.

"Do you know what things were like before the Hidden Villages?" he asked me, crossing his arms and settling his chin on them.

"Um..." I paused. Madara and Hashirama came to mind, but I had a feeling that their story wasn't common knowledge.

"Things were pretty much the same as they are today," Itsuki informed, taking my hesitation for an admittance of ignorance. "Fighting, conflict… kids right in the middle of it, killing and getting killed. For no good reason, too—half of the fights were just clans feuding."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" I wondered, not sure what to make of his impromptu history lesson.

Itsuki let out a short laugh.

"In a way," he said, smiling with black humor. "Because you know, Suzu-chan, they died without a purpose. Their deaths did nothing but add fuel to the fire, provoking more conflict, leading to more death…" His gaze unfocused a bit before he shook his head. "But today, when our children fight, they do more than just defeat enemies."

I put my elbow on my thigh and propped my chin up, frowning.

"I don't follow," I confessed.

"When you were looking around the village, what did you see?" he asked. I opened my mouth to ask how he'd known what I'd been doing, but he rolled his eyes and cut me off, saying, "Yes, it was that obvious you were people-watching, you don't need to ask."

I huffed. How rude. Still, he was hearing me out, so I answered.

"They were all just doing regular stuff," I told him. "Shopping, working, eating… happily, too."

"Exactly," Itsuki nodded sharply at that. "Happily. When the village children fight, they fight for the happiness of others—it's not over a grudge or anything. They're fighting for the sake of thousands of lives, so that other people can continue to be happy."

I stared.

"Maybe that doesn't justify it," Itsuki shrugged uncomfortably, looking a bit put off at my silence but willing to argue his point all the same. "But the village doesn't train children to be ninja for greed or for gain."

"Just for the happiness of others," I said, feeling strange.

"It's what they have to do," he confirmed solemnly. "As long as people are alive, they'll have to defend themselves. Age doesn't matter. If they don't do it now, it'll be worse when they're older… we all fight eventually."

I'm having culture shock, I realized. Here, "child soldier" held no connotation of kidnapping or forced labor or slavery. Children are people and people fight to defend what they cared about. That was the way of the Naruto world. That's how things had always been. They wouldn't be disturbed about this, not the way that I was. For them, things had never been different.

"How did you know all of that, mister?" I asked softly, wondering where in the world a simple shopkeeper had divined such wisdom.

"I used to be a ninja," Itsuki shrugged once more, waving a hand dismissively. "I'm retired, though. Nasty business."

"Retired?" I repeated, incredulous. He didn't look a day over twenty-five. "How old _are_ you?"

"Nineteen," he replied, matter-of-factly.

...

I… _what_? I looked at him, horrified. The was no way a nineteen-year-old should have eyes like his.

"Geez, kid, it's not that old," Itsuki frowned, completely misplacing the source of my shock. "Trust me, you'll be nineteen someday too."

"I… what happened?" I asked numbly, not entirely sure I even wanted to know. What in the world could force someone in the prime of their life into retirement? It didn't matter much, though, because Itsuki didn't want to share.

"Wow, it's getting dark out," he exclaimed, ignoring my query completely and going to stand by the storefront. "You'd better get home. Your parents will worry."

"I…" torn between finding out what happened and the very real concern of getting home on time, I looked helplessly at him.

There was a beat of silence.

"Oh, _fine_," Itsuki slouched, rubbing his neck with a sigh. "Come by again and we'll talk some more. I'll tell you about how I was a ninja, so run along before you get in trouble."

"Really?" I asked, jumping to my feet and shooting over to him. Itsuki ruffled my hair, looking a mix between irritated and resigned.

"Yeah, really," he affirmed. "I'll see you later. Go on." He pushed me forward, till I was standing in the street.

"Thank you, Itsuki-san!" I exclaimed as he went back inside, bending at the waist in a deep bow. The brunet just waved a hand, giving me a look that clearly said _go on, git._

I raced home in the wake of the setting sun, mind buzzing.

* * *

**A/N: EDIT: I said Hurricane Gale was based off of aikido, but I suppose in actuality it's closer to aiki-jujustu... aikido is probably too defensive to base a proper ninja fighting style off of. Ninjas are all about killing each other, after all. But then again, Hurricane Gale is fictional. I suppose instead of saying "based off of" I'll say "inspired."**

**I had fun with the props the kids made for playing ninja. Bendy-straw headsets just shot into my head out of nowhere, and then I just had to include it.**

**On another note, for those of you who watch the show subbed and can speak Japanese—can someone tell me what pronoun Minato actually uses? I mean, I understand he'll be switching between watashi and whatever it is he uses depending on the formality of the situation, but I noticed that when he's just talking to his friends and his team, he flip flops between ore and boku.**

**Do you think ore is his default and that he just switches to boku when he wants to be more friendly? Like, he used ore in Kakashi gaiden, but during Team Minato's bell test, he used boku… so was he using boku with his new students so not as to scare them, and once they got to know him better, switched back to ore? I know that some people consider the use of ore kind of arrogant, so I think it could be intimidating. But by no means am I fluent in Japanese, and the nuances of the language are quite mysterious at times.**

**(I know he also used boku as a kid, but many young boys do, and there's plenty of time for that to have changed.)**

**What do you guys think?**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	3. Age 5: Introductions: Part 3

**Published: 7/8/2014**

* * *

**Age 5: Part 3**

"_You… probably had the most functional family I've ever come across."_

"_...Is it bad that I think that's probably true? It's a wonder Konoha hasn't imploded with all of these repressed familial issues."_

* * *

I had never been the athletic type, but everyone knows adrenaline makes you run faster, and nothing gets adrenaline going like the threat of imminent destruction. I sprinted the road home like a track star, courtesy of the epinephrine, absolutely determined to reach the House before the sky blackened completely. Just the thought of pissing Auntie Reiko off was enough to double my speed.

I know by now a lot of you might be thinking Auntie Reiko is a crazy tyrant. Kids at the House frequently shudder and think of death threats when the subject of her displeasure comes up, after all. But just let me remind you, we _are _children—even Minato—and a certain amount of exaggeration exists when it comes to the prowess of our parents, even in our heads. Don't take us _too _seriously. Auntie Reiko would never lift a finger against us in anger. In fact, she had a strict policy of spanking that left only ages two to four open to corporal punishment. If you start too early, she'd later tell me, spanking is only pointless violence; kids are still too young to correlate their actions as the cause of physical punishment at that point. Past the age of four, she abandoned physical discipline completely in favor of punishments such as extra chores or losing privileges.

Luckily, I was five and no longer eligible for spanking. I _was_,however, in dire danger of losing a good chunk of my daytime freedom, which was something I did _not_ want happening right now. Itsuki and I had a lot of talking to do, and there was no way I'd get that done if I was chained at home on House arrest.

The last rays of sunlight were withdrawing when I finally burst into the House's genkan, gasping like a fish out of water. One of my cousins, who had been crouching to pick up his sandals, was forced to jump up and stick a hand to the ceiling to avoid getting barrelled into.

"Hah… hah…" I wheezed, chest heaving as I fell gracelessly onto my butt. Oh, Lord, I never want to run like that again.

"Oh, you made it," Minato observed, hanging over me with one hand splayed against the dark wood of the ceiling.

"Uh… wow," I managed between gulps of air, staring up at him. He looked back down curiously, completely blasé about the fact that he was currently defying gravity.

"You okay?" he asked, still holding his shoes in his other hand, bare feet swinging in the air above me. "They were just about to send me out to look for you. You were this close to getting in trouble," he informed, putting the sandals under his arm and holding his thumb and forefinger less than a centimeter apart.

Dumbfounded by his casual insubordination to the laws of physics, all I could do in response was point at his hand and ask, "Doesn't that hurt?"

It certainly looked painful. All of his weight was hanging from his wrist, and it was bent at a ninety degree angle that really didn't seem natural.

"I'm reinforcing it with chakra, so I'm fine," he assured me with a smile. "Though with that said, it _is_ kind of uncomfortable…"

I immediately scooted to the left. Minato dropped and landed lightly on his feet, so softly that he didn't make a sound. I let out an involuntary "ooh."

"You'll learn how to do that when you're older," he told me amusedly, replacing his sandals in his cubbyhole—there was one for each of us nailed to the wall, mine was the second to last one on the bottom left—before picking me up and putting me on my feet. "Where were you? Uncle Souhei said you didn't come home after classes let out."

"I was exploring," I explained, pulling my own sandals off and putting them away. "And then I made friends with a shopkeeper and we ate dango and had tea together. He was really nice. I'm going to talk to him again tomorrow."

"Does that have anything to do with this thing?" Minato asked shrewdly, pointing at my forehead.

I frowned. What thi—?

Oh. I felt my face flame up at the realization I still had huge white square tacked onto my face. I'd completely forgotten about it.

"I might have met him by crashing into one of his boxes," I mumbled, looking down and fisting my hands in my shirt. Minato made a snorting noise, hand coming up to cover his mouth; I scowled at him.

"Sorry," he murmured, smothering a chortle.

"Do you think I need to see a doctor?" I asked sulkily. Yeah, Yondy, go ahead. Laugh it up. "I went kind of wonky for a second after that."

"What's this about a doctor?" Auntie Reiko asked, popping up around the corner and making me jump. "Oh, Suzu, _there_ you are. What happened to your face?"

"I smashed into a crate," I said as I did _not_ immediately begin inching behind Minato's leg. Hiding? Me? I'm not trying to hide.

Auntie Reiko looked distinctly unimpressed.

"Don't cut so close to curfew again," she warned, shaking the wooden spoon she was holding at me. "I'll let you off this time, but don't make it a habit."

"Yes, ma'am," I squeaked, _not_ reflexively clutching the hem of Minato's shirt in terror. My cousin looked down at me indulgently, mirth shining in his eyes.

"Fine. You should have your uncle take a look at that," the House matriarch advised before withdrawing. "He's in the living room."

Minato and I shared a look as she left. He raised an eyebrow.

"Please don't," I muttered.

Minato laughed and ruffled my hair before turning toward the stairs. We parted ways, me to go find Uncle Souhei, him to go do whatever in his room before dinner.

I felt a flare of envy at the thought of _his room_. While the House certainly was big—there were nine bedrooms—it was impossible for each of us to have a space to ourselves. Though the three oldest adolescents got to have their own rooms—which was honestly probably for the best, they _were_ teenagers—that meant everyone else had to share. As a result, I had three roommates. Three very young and very _hyper_ roommates.

Some nights I found I couldn't remember silence actually sounded like anymore.

"Ojisan," I called, shaking thoughts of my nightly trials away and peering into the sitting room.

Sure enough, he was there, sinking into the sofa with glasses on his nose and a scroll in his hands. Souhei Namikaze, as I'd quickly learned, was quite different from his super-active everywhere-at-once wife. In contrast to Auntie Reiko, who was more physical and in charge of training us in taijutsu and the sorts, he took care of more intellectual matters. He preferred to sit and read and take things easy.

(He was also the one you went to if you wanted money—he was far less stingy than Auntie.)

"C'mere, I'll look at it," he grunted, sitting up and rerolling whatever it was he was looking at. I went over and climbed up onto the couch next to him, where he easily peeled off the gauze and uncovered the gash I'd carved into my skin.

"What did you do?" he asked, hands—much to my surprise—lighting up with green chakra. Uncle Souhei was a medic-nin? No one had ever told me that.

"I walked into a shopkeeper while he was moving crates," I explained for the third time that evening. "He said I should tell my parents because I might need to see a doctor."

"Concussion?" Uncle Souhei muttered, producing a pen light out of nowhere and shining it into my eyes. I felt a sharp spike of annoyance at being unexpectedly blinded.

As he poked and prodded me, checking my gaze and tapping my knees and running some sort of diagnostic jutsu on my head, I wondered what kind of lives the House's caretakers had been living before they'd decided to start raising orphans. I knew that Auntie Reiko had been a Chuunin, once upon a time, and I also now knew that Uncle Souhei had received some measure of training in iryou-ninjutsu—which hinted at other hidden skills, if simply for the fact that being a medic was _damn_ hard—so they obviously had been career ninja at some point, but what had happened? Why did they stop?

"You're fine, as far as I can tell," Uncle Souhei finally announced, closing up the gash with a sweep of his hand and sitting back. "You probably just _went wonky_ afterwards due to shock."

I felt my ears turn pink. "You heard that?" I asked weakly. Oh, God, I was never going to live this day down, was I?

Uncle Souhei shrugged.

"You were right there in the hall," he said, jerking his thumb at the wall that connected the sitting room to the genkan. "What kind of ninja household would this be if we couldn't hear you through a few inches of wood?"

I put my head in my hands and tried not to melt into a puddle of embarrassed goo.

* * *

A few days later, breakfast had just ended when someone came knocking on the House's front door. Curious, everyone stopped in the dish washing-drying-stacking assembly line as Auntie Reiko left to answer it. I went and stood at the hallway entryway, watching curiously.

"Akihiko?" I blinked as my friend was revealed, standing on the doorstep with a blinding grin. He waved at me before looking up at Auntie.

"Good morning, obasan," he greeted pleasantly, which was kind of surprising. I didn't think he'd have proper keigo. He had always struck me as too Naruto-like for that.

"Good morning," Auntie returned with a smile, always delighted to encounter children, before glancing back at me. "Are you a friend of Suzu's?"

"Yup!" my red-clad classmate confirmed with double thumbs up and a wide smile. His teeth didn't go _shhhing, _but I wondered distantly if the Nice Guy pose had been invented yet all the same. "I was wondering if we could walk to the Academy together."

Several of my cousins laughed and whistled delightedly at this, nudging me with teasing smiles and winks. I flushed but looked to Uncle Souhei for permission. He shrugged at looked at his wife.

"We're about done here anyway," Auntie Reiko nodded at me. I immediately jumped down from my stool and went over to my schoolmate, released from my dish-drying duties.

"You have a lot of brothers and sisters," Akihiko commented as I put my shoes on. "Did your mom have lots of twins or something?"

"That's not my mom. We're wards of the clan, so we're all orphans," I added, wondering if he seriously thought a tiny woman like Reiko Namikaze had delivered all seventeen of us. Then again, he _was _five, so what did he know? "She's not old enough to be mother to half of us, either."

"Ohh," Akihiko nodded knowingly as I waved at my snickering family members and shut the door. "So you're all adopted, then."

"I—" I opened my mouth to try and explain the concept of "orphan" to him, but then shut it and just quit while I was ahead. "Yes, Akihiko. We're all adopted."

"I kind of wish I had a little brother," he confided as we set off. The Academy was only about a fifteen minute walk, so we could afford to go slowly, especially since he had come surprisingly early. "Or a little sister! She'd have to call me niichan," he giggled, looking immensely pleased at the prospect.

"Why don't you ask your mom for one?" I suggested. He was a young kid, so it probably wouldn't be too out of place to ask, and if he wanted a sibling, he'd be better off getting one sooner rather than later; there would be an awkward age gap in just a few years. Five was already going to guarantee some measure of distance.

"I don't have a dad," Akihiko replied thoughtfully. "Can she make one all on her own?"

"Erm…" I held in a grimace. Well, that was a minefield if I ever saw one. How does one explain the mechanics of babymaking to a little boy just after he tells you he has no father? I thought about it for a moment.

"...Race you to that tree," I told him, pointing randomly down the road as I decided that you didn't.

Akihiko, ever the jock, took the bait without a second thought and shot off before I'd even had the chance to bend my knees. He had reached a large oak several seconds before I'd caught up to him.

"I win!" he puffed out his chest triumphantly. "I'm the best racer in the whole class."

"You probably are," I agreed thoughtfully. Four levels of Hurricane Gale and the fastest of the class… this kid was probably going to grow up to be a taijutsu beast. Just my luck to have befriended two of the most talented kids in my class.

Actually, when I paused to think about it, with Yoshiya's propensity for ninjutsu, my friends would probably end up on the same team. Friend groups, if their skillsets meshed, were often preserved in Genin teams—the Ino-Shika-Cho was probably the prime example—because friendship only helped when it came to teamwork, and teamwork was _very_ Konoha. We had a reputation for being "soft" and "nice" for that exact reason, neverminding the fact that we put out ninja like the Professor and the Sannin.

(Honestly, I was pretty sure it was all part of the village's PR scheme. Civilians would be far more willing to hire "nice" ninja, after all... which also probably explained the ungodly amount of pet-chasing, garden-tending, fence-painting, and other assorted menial tasks Genin were made to do.)

"Suzu?" Akihiko was snapping fingers in my face. "Hellooo?"

"Sorry," I apologized, gathering my thoughts and filing them away for later contemplation. I really had to stop checking out in the middle of conversations like that.

"You're always spacing out," he huffed, crossing his arms impatiently. "Come on, let's go. Bet I could beat you in a race to the Academy, too!"

* * *

Today marked the start of Basic Chakra Theory at the Academy. Most days I only listened with half an ear to our lessons—they usually covered things like basic mathematics or ninja stuff that I already knew from watching the anime—but for this lesson, I was all ears. Chakra was something mysterious, something that Earth had never seen, and I was going to take every opportunity to figure out everything I could about it. While the anime had been rich in information about its uses and its origin, I knew next to nothing of its mechanics. This, I hoped, would rectify that. After all, I had been acutely aware of my physical limitations as a human. We ran more slowly than almost every animal in existence. We were weaker, we were smaller, we heard less, we saw less… It had just been a fact of life. I would never be able to outrun a horse or balance like a cat. I couldn't climb walls like a lizard or dance on water like an insect.

And now that was wrong, because chakra made it possible. I needed to know everything I could about it.

Akihiko looked vaguely surprised by my unusual attentiveness. He was just as bad as me when it came to daydreaming in class, which wouldn't really have been a problem had he had some two decades of education stored in his little toddler head, but he obviously didn't; consequently, his grades suffered, which only cemented his reputation as the resident muscle-head. It wasn't that he was particularly stupid or anything, but he had no patience for book learning whatsoever.

"Alright, kids," our Chuunin sensei began, clapping his hands to draw our attention. I ceased thinking about Akihiko and peered at the teacher closely, prepared to absorb every word out of his mouth.

"Today we're covering one of the most important aspects of being a ninja..."

That afternoon, I learned a lot about chakra. When you molded it, it immediately began spilling out of the Hara—the stomach, that is—and into the circulatory system. You had to manipulate it by closing certain tenketsu points, which directed which way it would spill. For instance, if someone molded chakra for tree walking, he would close the tenketsu leading to every part of the body—head, arms, chest, etcetera—except the feet. This forced the chakra to flow to the site where it needed to be expelled.

The better a person could control their tenketsu, the better they could control their chakra. Those with good chakra control are able to close practically every unneeded tenketsu point, minimizing the amount wasted, while those with bad control would lose more because the chakra would leak out. The point of chakra control exercises, it seemed, was to familiarize yourself with the tenketsu points and the sensation of opening and closing them.

With that said, though, people don't really "close" their tenketsu points—in that sense it would be more like a Hyuuga stopping them up with Jyuuken blocks. It was more like filtering what chakra went where; if you actually did close your tenketsu points when channeling chakra to your feet, you would kill all of the muscles above the Hara, including the heart. Jyuuken users knew this, which was how Hyuugas killed people with a "Gentle Fist"; they simply gave them heart attacks by blocking all chakra flow to the chest, just the way Neji did to Hinata during the Chuunin Exam prelims. The blood, it seemed, was a side affect of cells rupturing due to the instability a sudden withdrawal of chakra caused.

That's where my next discovery came to play. There are actually two types of chakra: the chakra you mold intentionally and the chakra you mold naturally. The intentional chakra is used for techniques, while the natural chakra is the chakra your body produces on its own. The natural chakra flows through your muscles and makes them move. Closing tenketsu points is making it so intentional chakra is obstructed without impeding natural chakra.

That's also why chakra exhaustion kills people instead of just rendering them incapable of using jutsu. If a person continues to use techniques after running out of intentional chakra, the body begins taking the natural chakra from the muscles. First the arms, then the legs… Eventually, all of the natural chakra is drained away, robbing _all _muscles of their function, even the most essential ones. The heart stops beating and the lungs no longer contract and expand; the respiratory system grinds to a halt, leading to death by asphyxiation. You could be saved if someone with the same elemental nature chakra got to you in time and gave you transfusions, but you would be almost guaranteed to have some sort of brain damage due to lack of oxygen. And even then that wasn't always an option because in some really bad cases, if the jutsu in question was particularly massive, the chakra in the brain would be sucked right out. The result? A near-instantaneous death.

The Academy instructors were very serious as they delivered this last piece of information to us, because as small children, we had an extremely limited amount of energy to mix. If we tried to use jutsu, our bodies would almost immediately be forced to draw on natural chakra, and death would be in short order. That was why the learning of any actual techniques was saved for the final year of Academy instruction—to any normal five-year-old, a single E-rank jutsu was nothing short of fatal.

But as soon as the instructor said that, I sensed a loophole. Any _normal_ five-year-old... that wording implied that if you _weren't _a normal kid, it was possible. I found myself nodding—that did make sense. After all, Kakashi Hatake had graduated at the age of five, and passing the graduation exam meant being able to perform the three basic Academy jutsu with satisfactory proficiency.

But that begged the question: What did Kakashi have that other children didn't? I wracked my brain. Was it genetic? No, that couldn't be—even the best of clan kids, who were thoroughbred ninja stock, were incapable of using chakra at this age. Under that tenet, additional training wasn't the cause, either. On a physical level, any regular clan kid and Kakashi would be on even ground...

It struck me. They were level on a physical ground. That meant the limit wasn't to do with the body. But if it wasn't the body, then...

...Then it was mental. No, not mental—_spiritual. _

Oh, it all made sense! Kakashi had ten, no, _fifty_ times the amount of maturity any five-year-old did. That was why he could use chakra without killing himself—he had a high enough amount of spiritual energy to balance out the physical.

A great big smile bloomed across my face. So spiritual energy was the limiting reactant, was it? But if spiritual energy came from maturity and mental development and I, mentally a fully grown adult, was in possession of exceptionally well-developed mental faculties... then I had that particular reagent in excess. My only limit now was my body.

I held in a triumphant laugh. Today, I decided, was going to be a _great_ day.

* * *

**A/N:**

**Okay, this isn't relevant to the current chapter, but it's giving me a major headache and I'm just getting it all out now:**

**Kishimoto has, somewhere at whatever point, made a mistake regarding the ages of Kakashi and Obito and those lot. I don't know what's official and if he's going to retcon things or not, so I'm just going to make my own assumptions.**

**Maintaining the info from the databooks we already have and assuming everything in Kakashi Gaiden is correct, I'm still going with Kakashi's age six promotion to Chuunin. That puts a good chunk of Obito recollecting going to the Academy, taking the Chuunin Exams, Kakashi fighting Guy ect. into question, so I'm totally just pretending it didn't happen. Instead, I'm saying Kakashi graduated from the Academy at age 5 and got Minato as his sensei, but due to the combination of the number of graduates and Minato's young age, they have a one-on-one apprenticeship rather than a full team. They stay like that for awhile while Rin and Obito graduate from the Academy and take the Chuunin Exams on their own. By that time, Minato is older and decides he wants a full team, and he gets Rin and Obito to fill the slots. They have their bell test, but not to determine whether or not someone goes back to Academy, just to see if the team will work or not. After that, things go on as usual until Kakashi is promoted to Jounin the day of the mission to Kannabi Bridge.**

**_tl;dr Kakashi, Rin, and Obito are all the same age. They did not graduate together, nor did they take the Chuunin Exams together. Everything in this story operates on the assumption that the information provided in Kakashi Gaiden and the previous databooks will not be retconned._**

**/breath**

**Man, Kishimoto done derped. Makes my life harder, but oh well. Even if things do change, I'll just slap an AU in the story summary. It's an OC story anyway, there's going to be tons of meddling and canon-warping, so what's a little thing like this? Besides, I like my assumption better. If Kakashi and Obito had graduated together, it was likely they would've already achieved some sort of rapport by the time Kakashi Gaiden happened, the same way Naruto and Sasuke did. But if they'd only come together as a team after they all became Chuunin, the fact that they didn't get along just seems so much more plausible. It makes Minato's familiarity with Kakashi's skill level in the bell test scene work better, too.**

**Japanese terms: "ojisan" means uncle, "obasan" means aunt, and keigo is the form of speech one uses to be polite. ****With that said, though, Akihiko isn't actually all that polite to people who aren't his senior. You'll notice he doesn't use honorifics with either Yoshiya or Suzu. Though I suppose technically since Yoshiya is his best friend, that doesn't count. And since Suzu stopped using one for him the second she realized he didn't care, it's all mutual… but in the beginning, when they'd just met, he had been quite forward, which is actually very rude in Japanese culture. Suzu used be an American, though, so she didn't really care.**

**Also, natural chakra and natural energy should not be confused. The first keeps you alive; the second turns you to stone.**

**And with all that said, let me apologize for the novel of an author's note.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	4. Age 5: Introductions: Part 4

**Published: 7/15/2014**

**Edited: 10/20/2014 for a title change again. Back to the original.**

* * *

**Age 5: Part 4**

"_You were doing _what?!"

"_Eep! It's not that big a deal, is it, Auntie? I mean, I had already determined that it wasn't dangerous for me to use chakra—"_

"_Suzu, you're fighting a losing battle. Take it from someone who knows... you're not getting out of this."_

* * *

"Something's got you in a good mood, kid," Itsuki observed.

Straight after school had let out, I had gone skipping to Itsuki's fruit store, still giddy with the discovery that I wouldn't have to wait half a decade to start using chakra. Of course, I refrained from telling anyone that I was going to try it—that was a great way to get into heaps of trouble—but I was itching to start experimenting.

"Yup," I agreed, grinning but giving no context.

Itsuki raised an eyebrow. I gave him my best mysterious look.

"Well, come on in," he shrugged after a moment, making a summoning motion with his hand and turning to go indoors. I followed after him, trying to control my beaming. Itsuki already had tea and dango laid out on the counter; I was practically bouncing as we settled in to chat.

Now, let it never be said that Itsuki was stupid. I have never met a more intelligent—and manipulative—nineteen-year-old in my life. As soon as I'd sat down he'd launched into a narrative of his first C-rank mission and how it had gone horrendously wrong, handily enthralling me with every little action-filled detail. When he'd finished that story, he jumped right into the next, and the next, and the next... We were already an hour in a half into the visit before I realized that he had told me nothing whatsoever of his "retirement"; it was five minutes before I had to go when I realized I'd been duped.

"You did that on purpose!" I exclaimed, not quite angrily, but still very irritatedly. "That's dirty, you jerk!"

"Please, kid," Itsuki snorted, waving his bare dango stick at me and looking rather unimpressed. "If you're going to be a ninja, you'll have to do better than that."

"I'm five!" I protested, scowling heavily. "That's not fair! You can't just take advantage of me like —"

"But I can," the teen cut in sharply, expression going dark. "And so will others, and for crueler reasons than this. There is no such thing as fair play, Suzu Namikaze."

I flinched, feeling myself go wide-eyed. Itsuki's hazel eyes were a mix of swirling emotion, angry and sad and icy… and scary.

"But you—" I began weakly, taken very much off-guard by his unprecedented attitude change. What was up with him all of a sudden?

"I'm not just going to up give you the most painful story of my life just because you hit your head on a box of lychee," Itsuki informed coldly, crossing his arms and sitting back against the wall, mouth set in a hard line. "You have earn the privilege to hear that story."

If I hadn't been so shocked, I might have cried. This man was totally different from the one I had met yesterday, the one who had smiled at me and bandaged my head and laughed with me over sweets. This man was frigid and unsympathetic, severe and hard-hearted.

"I-I," I stuttered feebly, utterly at a loss for words.

Itsuki crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow, expression never softening, amity never returning. No, I thought, that wasn't Itsuki. That was a stranger.

I swallowed.

"I—I should go now," I finally managed, quickly sliding off my stool and setting my tea cup on it. The man called Mikawaya only continued to stare at me dispassionately; I hesitated only a second longer before bolting away, feeling my eyes begin to burn.

It was a while before I realized that his hands had been shaking when I'd left.

* * *

I have never been good at processing negative emotions. Dealing with rejection was probably the field in which I was poorest, and it showed; as soon as I'd reached a deserted park across the market district, having run a full five minutes without stopping, I'd promptly sat down on a swing and burst out crying.

It took me a good twenty minutes to just chill out and begin thinking something beyond _why did he do that that was horrible _and _he's right why would he tell me how could I assume _and _I'm such an asshole he hates me_. After that, though, I did what I did best and shoved the whole affair out of my mind. I was a champion when it came to avoiding my problems, after all; finding distractions was one of my great talents. And as it so happened, I had the perfect puzzle to take my mind off of things—people spent lifetimes studying chakra, after all.

The House, I knew, would be a horrible location for practicing chakra—at least for now—because there were too many distractions and the chances of getting caught were astronomically high. I couldn't go back yet if I wanted to give it a try today. After inspecting the area for a few minutes, though, I realized this park would a great place for it: There was no one here except for a lone pair of siblings dangling on the monkey bars a few ways away, and even if they noticed me, which was rather doubtful, they wouldn't be able to tell what I was doing.

I nodded, course of action decided. I stood up and reached for one of the swing set's supporting bars, grasping it and pulling myself up to the top. Once I scooted into position, I slowly stood up on the top bar and took a deep breath before jumping at the tree just beyond, where I caught a branch and hauled myself up.

Ah, ninja blood. The climbing gene must be genetic, because if I had done that back home, I'd have probably broken my neck.

I climbed a bit higher to hide myself and found a nice forked branch to settle in. Lying back against three crossing limbs, I wedged my sandal's sole in where the bough split and made sure that I would be secure. Once I was sure I wouldn't fall if I passed out, I relaxed my muscles and set to contemplating how to mold chakra.

Alright, what did I know? Chakra was the fuel for ninja techniques. It had its own circulatory system that moved in a spiral. It was originally intended to allow people to connect to others' spiritual energy, but people used it connect to themselves so they could use ninjutsu. To make it, I needed to mix physical and spiritual energy…

"Better start simple," I muttered, plucking a leaf off of the branch near my head. I vaguely recalled the fact that the feet were one of the hardest places to put out chakra, so the tree walking exercise was right out, but leaf sticking was something I knew Academy students did. That made sense, though; if chakra was hard to put out in the feet—which was mostly because there was only a single tenketsu in the very center of the foot's bridge—the forehead, which still only had a single tenketsu but a comparably smaller surface area, would be magnificently less frustrating a place to teach young children to manipulate their chakra.

Well, I thought, sitting up and holding the leaf to my forehead, here goes. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, imagining the energy swirling in the Hara, thinking of Jiraiya's explanation of spinning the chakra in a certain direction. What felt the most natural? I pursed my lips and concentrated. Clockwise, it seemed…

I felt a grin begin to stretch across my face as a small trickle of warmth slid through my stomach, like hot tea in an empty belly. It was a pleasant feeling. Alright, so that was mixing chakra? That was easy. This wouldn't be so bad.

"Oh," I muttered as the warmth began to escape. Okay, closing tenketsu came next. But where were the tenketsu? I concentrated, tracking the path of the hot-tea sensation and feeling where it began to snake out. I focused on those spots, willing the chakra to stop; to my delight, vein by vein, its advance halted.

Victorious, I let a single sliver climb up through my chest and to my throat, carefully stopping up any escape routes. Finally, after warming my cheeks and temples, I felt the tiniest bit pool onto my forehead. It pushed up against the leaf, clinging to its grooves and bumps.

I slowly let my arm drop.

"Success!" I cheered when it continued to hang on my skin, held in place by the chakra. It fell off a second later and floated to the ground, but I didn't care because I had _totally _used chakra just now and holy _crap that was awesome!_ I did the leaf-sticking exercise on my first try!

I eagerly grabbed another leaf, this time letting the chakra flow through my right arm and to the tip of my index finger. Gingerly, I poked the leaf and watched, amazed, as it stuck even as I held it upside down and waved it around. I pulled the leaf off and let the chakra flood my hand before pushing it onto the branch next to me; there was a quiet crunch as the chakra grabbed onto the bark and held.

Okay, let me just tell you all now that when I get excited, I do stupid things. Yes, I _know _that is not a good habit for a ninja-in-training to have, but I can't help it; that's just how I am. Besides, who had time to think about the potential dangers of a volatile and physics-defying energy force when you could do awesomely cool physics-defying things with it? Certainly not me.

But with that said, I really should have thought twice before I placed the leaf back onto my palm and slapped another chakra-coated hand over it. Why? Because the stupid little green monster shot out and sliced right through my arm, cutting across my forearm before burying its tip in my bicep. Blood immediately began leaking from the laceration, little beads of red merging to make a thin, angry crimson line.

I stared, aghast, at the innocuous little plant organ sticking out of my skin. It was regular leaf, teardrop-shaped with a light green stem and several little veins. It was faintly serrated at the edges, but by no means should ithave been able to break my skin. And that besides, the cut was far too neat to have come from from such a jagged edge.

What the hell?

Blood began to dribble down my arm and to my elbow, where it formed tiny blots that hung suspended for a second in the air before falling down to the earth. I watched it drip for a moment longer before dumbly pulling the leaf out of my upper arm and folding it between my thumb and middle finger; it immediately bent, flimsy and delicate. I put its edge to my left index finger and ran it over the skin repeatedly like a saw, but it only tickled me.

...What the hell?

I took out a napkin I'd stuffed in my pocket at lunch and wiped up my arm before it could get all over my clothes; I really didn't feel like explaining to Auntie why the brand new zip-up vest that I had begged and begged for (what? It was a cool vest with a hood and a zipper that could go all the way up to my nose!) was suddenly all blotched up with blood. Then I turned my attention back to the leaf.

Very, _very _carefully, I coated my hands with chakra again and then closed them over the leaf. It didn't jump out and try to maul me again, but it _did _suddenly begin buzzing uncontrollably. Eyes squeezed half-shut in trepidation, I slowly lifted one hand.

The leaf stayed put and, thankfully, didn't begin shredding my hand off now that it was free. It was glowing a faint light blue, humming with energy. I gently picked it up, making sure not to touch its edges, and ran it across the tree's trunk. It carved a rough line across the bark.

"Oh my God," I said lowly, jaw dropping as realization hit me. That was _chakra flow_.

"Holy _shit!_" I shrieked delightedly, throwing my hands into the air; the leaf lost its sheen when I let it go. "I am a _genius!_"

(It was lucky no one I knew what around to hear me begin cackling like a madwoman, because if there had been, I probably would have been shipped straight to the loony bin.)

After a moment of concentration, I recalled Asuma's explanation of chakra flow to Naruto: It was two opposing chakra currents, grinding together to sharpen each other to deadly little pieces. Or, well, that was what he said in regard to wind chakra flow, which must have been what I had used, because the only other cutting-capable chakra type was lightning, and I was fairly sure my primary nature wasn't lightning. I mean, it was possible I had it as a tertiary nature, but I was a Namikaze, and when it came to Namikazes it's either wind or water. Being from the wave branch of the clan, I would have thought my primary would have been water, but I knew as a fact from my Academy lessons that secondary chakra natures took years of practice to use without extreme concentration. I had infused that leaf with wind chakra without even meaning to, so there was no way it was my secondary.

What luck it was for me to have randomly decided to smash my chakra-coated hands together over a leaf! I felt my cheeks going rosy with exhilaration. If I could get this down by the time I became a Genin, it—

...It could save my life.

My excitement faded, replaced by creeping sense of horror. When I became a Genin, a war would be on. Though Minato—who I had been using as my measuring stick to determine the timeline—had only just recently become a Jounin, he had mentioned to me a few days ago he would be taking on a six-year-old Genin just recently graduated from the Academy as his student. That could be no one but Kakashi, and if Kakashi was six now, about one and a half years older than me, that meant that the Third Shinobi World War was seven years away at the _latest_. But I highly doubted it would take that long, because if Kakashi had been thirteen when Kannabi Bridge happened, and Kannabi Bridge had marked the beginning of the end of the war, there was no way I had seven years. Given the fact that I remember a scene from the anime where Kakashi's agemates had been eating dango and "celebrating the long war's end," as I recalled one of them saying, it was entirely possible that the war could even start _tomorrow_.

When curfew rolled around and I came down from my tree, my hands were shaking. They were aching and raw after putting out so much chakra for the first time, but I just gritted my teeth and held on to the feeling grim determination.

I wasn't going to just _get this down_ anymore. I was going to _master _it.

* * *

"You're pretty crabby today," Yoshiya told me bluntly the next day over lunch.

I paused in scowling at my lunch box and looked up and him in surprise.

"Is it that obvious?" I asked, holding back a sigh as I shoved a piece of potato into my mouth, wincing when I accidentally stabbed my gums with my chopsticks. Yoshiya raised an eyebrow.

"Stupid question, sorry," I did sigh then, putting my elbow on the desk and leaning my cheek into my hand, laying my chopsticks down glumly.

"You wanna share?" Akihiko asked through a giant mouthful of onigiri, spraying a few morsels as he spoke. Yoshiya made a gagging noise.

"You're disgusting," he informed, delivering a well-placed kick to our spiky-haired friend's leg before quickly scooting away. I wrinkled my nose and picked a bit of half-chewed nori off my arm.

"I think I'm with Yoshiya on this," I decided, eyeing the repulsive mess of slobbery rice covering the desk with a grimace. "That is so gross, Akihiko."

Akihiko scowled and began chewing furiously. A huge lump distended his throat when he swallowed, making the skin stick out so far that I wondered how he wasn't choking.

"Shut up," he gasped after he forced the food down with a long swig of juice. "I can eat however I want. But seriously, what's up with you?"

I pursed my lips in contemplation. Was complex social interaction above their heads? Would they understand how the little nuances of Itsuki's demeanor could mean so much more than they appeared to? They were still so young, and besides that, they were young boys, so when they got angry, they said so.

"There's this shopkeeper I've been visiting lately," I said at a length, wondering how best to describe my problem to them. "He was really nice to me when I met him. He helped me out and gave me food and stuff."

Akihiko stared. "I don't see the problem," he said.

"She's not finished, dumbo," Yoshiya rolled his eyes. Akihiko bristled and turned to glare at him.

"The _problem_," I interrupted before they could get started, "is that yesterday he did a total one-eighty. He went from really friendly to really mean."

"Oh," Akihiko said, attention successfully diverted. He turned back to face me. "Did you say something?"

"I might've, but I don't think that was the issue," I sighed, not quite sure if the whole "you're not fair" thing could have prompted such an extreme swerve in demeanor. Something told me that was more a symptom of the change than the cause.

"So he suddenly was just mean to you?" Yoshiya asked thoughtfully. "If you didn't do anything, maybe it's not your fault. Maybe he's just taking something out on you."

Was that it? I would be the last person to be surprised if Itsuki had some sort of repressed issue. I thought back and imagined him. Arms crossed, eyebrow raised… expectation in his eyes.

He had been checking me, assessing me for something. It was the look someone gave when a student failed a test, when they couldn't solve a problem… But what had he wanted me to do? What had I done wrong?

"You should just beat him up," Akihiko suggested cheerfully. Ah, that was typical Akihiko, just hit the problem until it solves itself.

I paused.

...Hit the problem?

"I don't like the look on your face," Yoshiya said anxiously. "Please don't tell me you're taking this moron seriously."

"Hey!" Akihiko protested, indignant.

"Akihiko, do you think you could beat a Chuunin?" I asked slowly, gears turning in my head. Itsuki had said he'd been a Chuunin...

"Huh? Um, maybe," he blinked, looking surprised that I really was asking. "Yeah, probably, if I took him off guard. Do you know the ikken hissatsu kata from third tier?"

Ikken hissatsu, to annihilate in one blow. That was unusual for Hurricane Gale, which was heavy in counters and defensive techniques. The philosophy of our clan's style was that one should never throw the first blow.

"I'm only learning at the second level right now," I shook my head negative. "I didn't know we had techniques like that."

"My shishou says that if you're fighting someone who outclasses you in skill and experience, you have to end the fight in a flash," he informed. "He says that's when it's necessary."

"Do you think... you could show me?" I asked a bit hesitantly, glancing at the clock on the classroom wall. There were still forty-five minutes till lunch ended.

"If you want," Akihiko grinned a bit. "Well, you need to have learned the Rising Tide attack forms, though."

"I have those down," I nodded. Rising Tide was one of the first offensive kata learned in Hurricane Gale.

"You're joking!" Yoshiya took the opportunity to put in, looking astounded. "You aren't seriously going to try to beat up a Chuunin for being mean to you, are you?"

"Nope," I said, getting up to follow Akihiko outside. Yoshiya stared.

"...Then what are you doing?" he asked bemusedly.

"I'm going to beat up a Chuunin to prove a point," I replied.

* * *

I will not claim to be a tactical mastermind. Analytics, calculations, predictions… that sort of thing I left to others. But even though I couldn't claim to be good at strategizing, I _could _claim to be decently clever; the fact that I had something to prove probably helped.

Over the course of the next three days, I lurked around Mikawaya Fruits, observing Itsuki's routine from a distance. I had no doubt that he noticed me—even with my hood on and collar zipped all the way up, it was hard to miss such a deliberate child—but I had planned for that, too, so that when I showed up on the third afternoon I was totally ignored.

Perfect.

Itsuki emerged from the shop carrying a stack of heavily loaded crates, eyes briefly flickering toward me. The second he turned his gaze away, I sprang forward.

Itsuki, I knew, had once been a Chuunin, a journeyman ninja who had seen a fair bit of combat. I also knew that battle senses, once developed, were never fully lost. But Itsuki had not been in practice for a long while, so while he dropped his burden and blocked my first punch easily, catching my wrist and lifting it so I was forced to stand on my toes, he was totally unprepared for the shameless nutshot I delivered with my foot.

He had enough self control not to scream or anything, but he immediately sank to his knees, releasing my hand with a pained grunt. I spread my feet apart like Akihiko had showed me and took a deep breath.

"Hurricane Gale: Tidestrike!" I shouted. Shouting, however corny it seemed, was a very important part of martial arts here. Kiai, it was called, and though sometimes it startled or intimidated opponents, it was mostly just to convey a fighting spirit. If anything, it helped the user concentrate on performing the attack better.

My first strike was deflected, but it brought me in close enough range to slam my palm over Itsuki's ear. Sense of orientation disrupted, his next block was fumbling enough for me to bring my sandal up and plant it over his windpipe with a victorious yell.

Yes, that was my plan all along. Lull Itsuki into a false sense of safety by doing nothing for two days, kick him in the balls to bring his neck into my range, and use one of my clan's very few killing strikes to give him this message: I am going to be a ninja. Maybe I was only a kid, and maybe this attack would only bruise him, but I was on my way. That, I had realized after talking with my friends, was what he had been waiting for: proof that I could be a ninja.

"I don't know what made you retire," I told him, slightly out of breath, "but whatever it was, don't think I'll let it happen to me."

For a moment, Itsuki could only stare at me, lips parted just a bit. Then he let out a hoarse chuckle.

"That was dirty," he complained, staggering to his feet.

"No fair play," I grinned in reply, far more cheekily than I should have. The brunet cracked a smile.

"Kid, you might be okay after all," he said.

* * *

**A/N: Yes, Suzu puts on her srsbsns face for the first time. She's had fun goofing around for the past few chapters, but from here on out, things are, as predicted, probably going to get worse. A lot worse.**

**Yoshiya and Akihiko may bicker a lot, but they really are good friends. They met because Akihiko couldn't get a seesaw going on his own and Yoshiya was there to help, and there is nothing better to inspire friendship between two little boys.**

**As a side note, though Suzu says yelling out technique names is a form of kiai, actual kiai are usually only a single syllable. Also, I was really, really tempted to title this chapter "Nutshot."**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**

**(PS: I kind of want to write a sidestory showing Itsuki's thought process throughout this chapter. What do you guys think?)**


	5. Age 9: Children at War: Part 1

**Published: 7/27/2014**

**Edited: 8/24/2014 for typos.**

* * *

**Age 9: Part 1**

"_Those days before everything went to hell... We were so easygoing, excited about whatever tomorrow held, just cheerfully going about our lives. What would things be like now if we had studied more, trained harder, and gone in knowing some of us would never come out? We were so oblivious… we didn't have a clue."_

* * *

"You've got a letter, Suzu!"

A scroll sailed through the air. I looked up observed its arc, wondering if I needed to catch it, but Auntie Reiko had impeccable aim; the little cylinder cleared Sachiko's head by a good two inches and landed straight into my lap. I put down my notebook—I had been doing some old-fashioned last-minute cramming—and picked it up.

It was sealed with a blue cloth. _Namikaze Misuzu_, it read, _Central Block Building 2, Namikaze Compound, Konoha Residential District 1_. I grinned at the familiar script and immediately unrolled it.

"'_Dear Suzu,'_" I read aloud for the benefit of my cousins, who had immediately crowded around me on the sofa once they realized who it was from. "'_I hope you're doing well. I'm fine, though it's pretty tiring being here on the front lines, always wondering when the next skirmish will be. The Iwa ninja have been fighting even harder than usual and we've lost a lot of good men. Morale is starting to dip and supplies have been running low. Hopefully Hokage-sama will be sending teams to restock us soon._

"'_I haven't had any serious injuries as of yet, but my friend Jun'ya had to have an amputation yesterday because an enemy shinobi crushed his legs with an earth jutsu. Lately we've been trying to fight long-range from the treetops because the enemy has been sucking people into the dirt, but there's a new ninjutsu specialist who keeps knocking entire sections of the forest over with a technique that grows stalagmites out of the ground. We may be on opposite sides of the conflict, but I at times I can't help but admire the Rock ninjas' tenacity and persistence… even though it means our field medics are swamped._

"'_I miss everyone at the House as usual, too. It'll be nice to have Auntie Reiko's cooking again when I come back. I should be home soon; my rotation ends in three months. Until then, stay healthy, and good luck on your graduation exam—I know you'll be amazing. I hope you get a good team. Love, Minato._

"'_PS: I put a standard-issue Iwa-style sword in the attached storage scroll. I know Tenrou will have been whining for one, so please give it to him before Heiwako strangles him. Tell Auntie not to worry, I've already checked it for poison. It's hardly been used, so it must have been someone's spare.'_"

"What? Awesome!" Tenrou, our resident kenjutsu freak, jumped up with a whoop. "Niichan is the _best!_"

"I better not catch you cutting trees again, Tenrou," Auntie warned from the doorway, where she was sorting through the rest of the mail. "You should be glad I've been letting you use a live blade at all. One more time and it'll be back to practice swords for you."

"Might as well just demote him now, then," Heiwako declared with caustic smirk. "If there's anything Ten-kun lacks, it's self-control."

"What? Says the fatty who ate _three _bowls of rice this morning!" Tenrou retaliated angrily.

Heiwako started, arms automatically coming down to encircle her waist. "Fatty—?" she repeated dumbly, looking stricken. There was a beat of silence before she was up on her feet and breathing fire, face red with wrath of the heavens. "_Fatty?_" she roared, throwing herself forward with a loud battle cry. "You _never _call a lady a fatty!"

"You're the manliest lady I've ever met!" Tenrou taunted, diving away from her lunge before scrambling to the door. "Fatty, fatty, fatty!"

"Kids," Uncle Souhei said loudly from his place on the floor at the coffee table, drawing our attention away from the fight as the two ran outside. He adjusted his glasses and set down his book, fixing each of us with a stern stare. "Let those two be a lesson of what _not _to emulate when you become Genin."

"Yes, Uncle," we chorused. Though Heiwako and Tenrou were both older than me—they had been Genin for a year and a half now—they were probably the most childish pair of friends in the entire House. Given the fact that five of us kids were due to become official ninja in a few hours, it was hardly the smartest time to be acting like that. I eyed Auntie Reiko warily; those two were going to be due for a good scolding later... possibly in the form of the worst training session of their lives. I really hoped they hadn't forgotten who was in charge of taijutsu lessons in this household.

"We have five minutes before we have to go," Jinta observed in the ensuing silence, glancing at the clock hanging above the window. "What were the seals for kawarimi again?"

"Ram, boar, ox, dog and snake," Akira instantly replied.

I looked at him sidelong. That kid was a walking dictionary. One time I asked him what his longest set of seals was and he had gone through over a _hundred_ of them.

"You're definitely going to fail if you don't know kawarimi," Chiharu said, looking unimpressed.

"I was just double-checking, okay?" Jinta scowled defensively, shuffling anxiously. "I know it, I just wanted to make sure."

"Jinta, you shouldn't have to double check the seals." Uncle Souhei raised an eyebrow, glancing up at us before returning to his reading, eyes scanning the page before him critically. It was a plain brown book with a blank cover, and the writing was very small and cramped. It was impossible to make out from here, but judging by the shape of the words and the spaces in the text, it wasn't Japanese.

Huh. Was he studying a cipher?

"The seconds you spend wondering how you should twist your fingers are the seconds that can determine life and death," Auntie Reiko put in helpfully as she finished what she was doing and went to go sit behind her husband on the couch. "It's very dangerous for new ninja right now, you know."

"But we never need the Academy jutsu anyway," Tenrou complained as he appeared at the window, having apparently returned after evading his teammate. "All we do is pick vegetables and chase pets."

I felt my eyebrows fly up. So Genin did missions like that even in times of war? The way Tsunade had been talking to Nawaki, telling him to run if he ever saw an enemy ninja, it had sounded to me like they were sending kids out into danger all the time. But then again, that did make sense; if Konoha refused missions for being too trivial, that would make us seem weak. If they were so unimportant, why shouldn't we be able to complete them?

I wasn't sure what to make of that. Tora hadn't been born yet... right?

"Welcome back, Tenrou," Auntie greeted, smiling sweetly. Tenrou took one look at her, paled several shades, and turned right back around before sprinting away. Uncle Souhei snorted.

"He knows he has to come back eventually," he said, never looking up. "People, always putting off the inevitable..."

Ah, Souhei Namikaze. A neverending font of snark and dry wit, my favorite uncle was. I could never match his eloquence, but I was very fond of it—and him—despite that.

"Suzu?" called another voice from the window. Akihiko popped up, peering in at my gathered family members curiously. Despite the passage of four years, his wardrobe had remained quite consistent: as always, he was dressed in very vivid red. Still, it wasn't like I was much better; I still had my super ninja vest and its awesome eye-high zipper. I even still wore the same kind of black skirt I had as a kid.

"You coming?" he asked. "We're gonna be late."

In unison, the House's inhabitants turned their heads and looked up at the clock.

"..._Crap!_"

* * *

From what I could tell, the graduation exam hadn't changed much between now and Naruto's time. I never got to see them take the written portion of the exam, but it was pretty just the same as all of the other tests we took: we got our papers, sat down at our seats, and filled out the questions.

I passed it quite handily—I had been a pro test-taker in my old life, too—but that wasn't really saying much. It was just the written portion, after all. Two or three history questions, some math, a few strategic scenarios… After the exams were handed in I settled in with Yoshiya and Akihiko to wait for my turn in the practical. Yoshiya went before us, and after him Akihiko was called by virtue of his given name. I went immediately after because we were the only two Namikazes in this class.

I was sent into an empty classroom where a Chuunin instructor was waiting; he looked down at a clipboard and asked me to complete various tasks, ranging from push-ups to kata to leaf-sticking. I held back a grimace when he placed the little green plant bit in my palm and quickly stuck it to my forehead, trying not to remember my previous encounters with innocuous little plant organs. After that, he selected two of the three E-rank Academy jutsu for me to perform—kawarimi and henge—before looking me over, nodding, and tossing a forehead protector at me.

"Congratulations, you pass," he told me, only slightly dully. I looked at his faintly glazed gaze and felt a bit bad for him. I knew there had been a reason I had been studying to be a researcher and not a teacher before I came here.

When I went outside my best friends were waiting, Yoshiya grinning madly and Akihiko unashamedly hooting and shouting, jumping around and doing backflips. I smiled at the sight of them and pulled the navy blue cloth of the hitae-ate around my forehead, pulling back my bangs so they wouldn't itch and tying a knot under my tufty little ponytail.

"You passed!" Akihiko crowed loudly when he saw me, flipping out of a handstand and diving at me with a hug. "This is so _awesome! _I _so _bet we'll be on a team together, it'll be _great!_"

"Do you think she wouldn't?" Yoshiya demanded with a laugh, punching him in the shoulder before offering me his warmest, sunniest smile. "Congrats. It'll make me really happy if we're on a team together, too."

"Me too." I smiled back a bit painfully, hugging Akihiko back before jabbing him in the sides so he could let me go and I could breathe again. He released me with a gasp and glared.

"You look good, Akihiko," I told him before he decided that a fight was in order. Unlike Yoshiya, who was above such plebian things as fist fighting, Akihiko knew I occasionally engaged in a quick slugfest—not that I ever won against him—and wouldn't hesitate to get the jump on me.

"Y'think?" he lit up with a laugh, adjusting his forehead protector and puffing his chest out.

Sometimes, I thought a bit dryly, this kid made it a bit _too _easy. But instead of telling him that, I just nodded solemnly; no need to undo the work you've already accomplished.

"I wish I could do that," Yoshiya told me enviously as Akihiko grinned and cartwheeled away. I just gave him a wry smile. He'd learn how to distract little kids when he was older, too… and not a little kid himself.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent chasing after Akihiko and collecting snacks from various shopkeepers who knew us and were fond enough to give them. We stopped by the Mikawaya fruit store, but Itsuki was away, so we just shrugged and moved on. Yoshiya came to hang out with us at the Namikaze compound, so Akihiko and I showed him different places of interest—Akihiko's house, mine, the clan training ground, the stone garden and the koi in the pond. When all was done, we shared popsicles at the House before separating until tomorrow, when we would receive team assignments.

* * *

_Niichan,_

_Tenrou says thank you for the sword. Heiwako's still making fun of him, but he's been practicing kenjutsu ever since he got it, so Auntie is glad. That was a very clever way to get him to stop slacking off. It was like you bribed him without even having to speak to him._

_I graduated fourth in my class, behind my friend Yoshiya and two boys from the Hyuuga clan. I'm not sure if that makes me top kunoichi, though, because I think Serizawa Haruhi had a higher cumulative score than me. My friend Akihiko would have probably been Rookie of the Year if he wasn't so bad at taking tests—he got a perfect score on the practical._

_I'm really happy with my team, Team 11, because my teammates are my best friends. Yoshiya and Akihiko were really happy too, though there was a problem with our sensei, who was supposed to be back from the front lines two weeks ago. They sent a messenger out to the field and they found out she had actually been killed a little while ago, so we've just been operating under different Chuunin advisors because there are no other free Jounin in the village. It's okay, though, because we've only been running D-ranks for the past few weeks._

_By the way, this is just a theory I came up with, but when you were a Genin, was there a crazy demon-cat you had to capture for the daimyo's wife? Because there's this lost pet mission where we have to catch a cat named Toramaru and there's a procedure sheet in the scroll that has it down to an exact science. I swear that kind of precision only comes with years of refinement, and whenever Lady Shijiko comes she doesn't even have to explain anymore because they just know what she needs._

_I feel really bad for that cat. He's always being strangled and she puts a bow on him even though he's a boy. That probably explains why he's so ferocious. He's already taken out Yoshiya twice; I bet the only reason why the village accepts this mission is because we get paid so much to do it—it's unbelievable how many Genin have been seriously injured on this mission. Do you think someone's given it ninja training? Maybe it's descended from a nin-cat..._

_Anyway, because we've been performing really well, they're going to give us our first C-rank even though it hasn't even been two months yet. We're going to run the supply line with a couple of Chuunin squads. They're splitting us up, but that's not really unusual. They do that a lot since we don't have a jounin-sensei._

_I'm going to Tatsumi River. That's where you are, right? We've included ink and blank scrolls, too, so you can start writing letters again. That's why you haven't sent anything for the past two months, right? I remember you saying you were running out of supplies. Sorry I've been sending you basically the same letter this whole entire time. I wasn't sure if you'd gotten the last one, so I just kept writing the same updates. But at least this part is new! Anyway, if we're lucky, we might bump into each other while I'm there. That would be great._

_See (hopefully) you soon!_

_Love,_

_Suzu_

* * *

Assumptions, as everyone knows, are dangerous to make, and going into a mission with them is a big mistake. I made many, many mistakes on my first C-rank, and that was one of them—I assumed Minato had stopped writing me letters because he'd run out of supplies.

We should have been expecting the unexpected that day, but it was easy to let down your guard when you're surrounded by a group of big, buff chuunin. Well, two big, buff chuunin and one slightly skinnier one. Nothing could possibly get to me with such a giant wall of muscle around me. And in turn it was easy for _them _to let down their guard because when the village sends a genin to fill in an empty spot in a platoon, then hey, things obviously aren't going to be _dangerous_.

Yeah. Second mistake.

The sound of combat was so completely unanticipated that we actually all just froze up when we heard it. Literally, we stood there like idiots with our mouths hanging open. Theoretically, the supply line should have remained behind Konoha's lines the entirety of the way, and the only place we might hear a little peep of a swordfight was at the base camp, which was still several hours away. But we were not at the camp and we could hear fighting and that, of course, could only mean one thing: Something had gone wrong, and we were in the middle of it.

Standing. Like targets with bulls' eyes on them.

Third mistake.

My chuunin comrades were dead before they even knew what was happening. The only reason why I escaped a swift decapitation myself was because I was several feet shorter than everyone else. Naturally, I screamed like the little girl I was and dove into the bushes like a headless chicken.

Now, I was not a particularly talented or clever girl. I mean, I could be cool once in a while at a couple of things, but that was true of everyone; all people could name a couple of times in their lives when they did something awesome. I had a few of them myself.

This was not one of them.

When someone seized me by the ankle and dragged me out of my ill-conceived notion of a hiding place, I panicked. I flailed, I screamed, and I did the worst thing any ninja could ever do—I _stopped thinking. _I had no plan, no response, not even a basic instinct to fight back. My brain just shut down. Years' worth of training and practicing in taijutsu and chakra and tactics cumulated in nothing, for at that moment, the sum of my thoughts equated to this:

_PLEASE GOD DON'T KILL ME PLEASE DON'T LET THEM KILL ME PLEASE I DON'T WANT TO DIE._

Pathetic mental grovelling—fourth mistake.

Honestly, I should have died that day. It wasn't fair that I survived. A thousand other kids on a thousand other battlefields died for smaller slip-ups—why should I have been special? It was something I struggled with for a long time. Why had I lived where countless others died? Even today I don't quite have a satisfactory answer, but the short one was something like this: Luck. Luck, and Minato Namikaze.

As I was frantically wiggling around, trying to break free instead of thinking about how it would probably be a good idea to block the sword strike that was about to take my head off, I saw a flash of yellow. It was just a brief burst of color, and before I could register what was happening I was being snatched out of the air and thrown over someone's shoulder. The only thing I saw of my attacker was his blood spraying over the ground.

A sharp whistle pierced the air and my rescuer leapt up into the trees, moving at speeds that could only be described as Mach 5. It was all I could do to cling for dear life, heart pounding wildly, breath coming in short gasps. I would later come to understand that many shinobi conflicts were like that: explosive, terrifying, and over in a blink of an eye. But at that moment my head was spinning, unable to process, still frozen in fear and shock.

What had just happened? Had my squad—had they just _died?_

"Deep breaths," someone was counselling me, holding my shoulders. "Shh. You're okay now. Calm down."

I found myself staring up into the face of the cousin I hadn't seen in nearly a year. He was smeared in dirt and blood, with twigs and leaves sticking out of his hair and rips in his clothes. Several others were standing around behind him, eyeing us closely. I blinked and looked around me; it was dark and it smelled of dirt, as though we were underground, or in some sort of cave.

...When the hell had we gotten here?

"Niichan," I said weakly, feeling like I had just run ten marathons in the space of ten seconds.

"Suzu," Minato murmured, wrapping me in a badly-needed hug. I could feel myself trembling as I fisted my hands against his flak jacket.

"What are you doing here?" he asked once we separated, hands still on my shoulders, blue eyes sharp and calculating. There was a glint in his gaze that I was unused to seeing; it made his face look hard and intimidating, like someone had just made a very bad mistake and was going to be paying for it soon. "Things are going badly, but not to the point where they should be sending you."

Despite the haze that had fallen over my brain, I translated that bit of dialogue easily: It's bad, but not bad enough that we need cannon fodder. I had the presence of mind to feel faintly alarmed. Had Minato seen Genin sent to their deaths on the field before?

"We… we were supposed to deliver supplies," I told him shakily, fisting my hands in my lap. "I-I… I sent you a letter…"

"Communications were cut a week ago," Minato told me grimly. "But if they sent you, that must mean they don't know…"

"...They got Junichi, didn't they?" someone behind him sighed, face turned downwards. "There's no way he wouldn't have relayed the message if he'd made it."

"It's more than likely they managed to intercept him," Minato agreed, face dark. The gathered ninja murmured restlessly—whoever Junichi was, he was most certainly dead by now. I began to feel a bit sick.

"Niichan…"

"I'm sorry," Minato apologized, looking at me regretfully as he got to his feet. "This can't wait—will you be okay here for a bit? We can talk when I'm done, so if you could just stay here for a while..."

_Where would I go?_ I wanted to ask. I'd get killed for real if I went out there on my own. But instead I just nodded and looked away, pulling my knees to my chest.

That was the first glimpse of the war I ever got. It would have been nice if that had been the extent of it, but I would be lying if I said I believed that this would be the worst of it.

No one ever said ninjas were _nice_, after all.

* * *

We spent a week in that underground shelter. The few remaining Leaf-nin with earth-natured chakra had carved it out, and the genjutsu specialists had hidden our presence with a large area-of-effect technique. It was the perfect place for a bunch of tree-huggers, as the Iwa-nin called us, to conceal themselves. If they had bothered to check for us in the ground they would've found us easily, but there was something to be said about hiding in plain sight.

Minato, I learned, had quickly become the de facto leader after the squad leader had died two weeks ago. He spent hours at a time talking and strategizing, analyzing maps and movements, trying find out how we could scrape out a victory with Konoha's remaining forces, a paltry seventeen shinobi plus a useless baby genin. I spent most of my time keeping out of the way, looking over people's shoulders from a distance and listening to them try to plan their counterattack. Around the fifth day, they began to argue a lot, and Minato's expression grew tighter and tighter with every passing hour. By the time the eighth dawned I knew something was about to go down. I could feel it in the air; there was going to be a fight, and it was going to be today.

That's another thing I learned about the war. The reprieves are never long.

"It's too dangerous," someone was hissing at my cousin, clutching something in his hands. The shelter was lit by emergency lamps, so it was too dark to see what it was, but a quick surveillance of the shelter revealed that several others were holding similar packages. I found myself feeling a bit wary. What was that, then? Bombs? Poison gas? With with numbers like these, I would be the last to be surprised if we were about to launch a large-scale chemical attack.

I soon found out, though, that it was something totally different. Minato crouched down in front of me and began unwrapping a mass of brown paper; from that, he withdrew a heavy and misshapen kunai and placed it in my hand. I felt my eyes go wide.

"I had Auntie Reiko get these made up and sent to me about a month ago," he told me quietly, taking my fingers and folding them over the hilt. "They're for a new technique I've just recently mastered. I'm going to try and use it today, so keep this with you."

I—_Hiraishin? _I gaped. This was a Hiraishin kunai. He had just mastered it recently? But if he was just going try it for the first time today…

Oh, no wonder why everyone had been so uptight the past few days. Minato was going to field test an unknown technique and everyone knew that if things went sideways we'd be losing an extremely skilled ninja. I had no idea who could lead us if he died here, so it was a very well-founded fear.

"Suzu-chan?" Minato was waving a hand in front of my face, looking mildly concerned. I mentally slapped myself. God, I _had _to stop doing that while people were talking to me…

"Just be careful," I mumbled, tucking my cousin's soon-to-be-signature kunai into my belt pouch. "I… I don't think I'll be able to make it back home without you." God knew I how easily it would be to slaughter me if I was alone.

"I will take down any Iwa ninja who so much as looks at you," Minato vowed, putting a hand on my head and pulling me forward until our foreheads touched. "It's my responsibility to take care of my precious people. I will never allow myself to die when others are depending on me."

That... was possibly the most touching thing someone had ever said to me. I felt my eyes begin to water. Lucky indeed—I didn't deserve that kind of unflinching love. I found myself unable to form words, so I just threw myself at him, wrapped my arms around his waist, and gave a giant squeeze.

If I had this kind of person at my back, there was no way I would be dying today.

Minato let out a warm chuckle and hugged me back before drawing back and motioning for me to follow him. We headed to to entrance of the shelter, where our remaining comrades were waiting.

"Are you sure about this?" a dark-haired man asked. Minato just nodded.

We exited the base, climbing up some roughly-made stairs. When everyone was out, the same ninjas who had created the shelter collapsed it with another jutsu, and the genjutsu users let up their protection.

"Everyone, you know what to do," my cousin said, meeting eyes with every person in the group. "We've all done our best to come this far. Let's not fail here."

There was a quiet but firm "yes" as everyone did a last minute equipment check before gearing up to go. Because I couldn't tree-hop fast enough to keep us with everyone in the group, I ended up riding on Minato's back as we made our way to clearer ground. It wouldn't be long before the Iwa ninja found us.

* * *

When the fight started, I'd immediately ducked away behind a large boulder. I wasn't nearly so stupid as to think I'd be able to hold my own out there. There was nothing to be ashamed about in hiding if you're doing it strategically, after all. I would only be a distraction to my comrades out there.

I didn't have any part in setting up Minato's kunai, but judging by the immediate panic that sprang up in the enemy ranks, my fellow Leaf ninja had accomplished what they had set out to do. After ten minutes of listening to the dull roar of combat, I worked up the courage to peek out of my hiding spot; there was a veritable carpet of Iwa-nin lying on the ground, pools of red blood seeping out from under each of them. I briefly saw a snatch of yellow before another cluster of ninja toppled over.

I swallowed, both thoroughly awed and just slightly disturbed. That... That wasn't a fight. That was a massacre. I stood watching in a dazed stupor, completely blown away by the sheer amount of carnage that met my eyes. I couldn't have torn my eyes away even if I tried.

Fifth mistake.

Even if he was probably the world's greatest badass, I'd known right from the start Minato couldn't possibly keep every single enemy ninja off me without withdrawing from the fight completely. That was the only thing that saved me when I stopped gaping long enough to look up and see a chuunin speeding through the air right toward me, a hail of metal raining down in front of him. I threw myself into a panicked roll, barely dodging, and got ready to run like a bunny.

I was _not_ ready for the hand that shot out of the dirt and grabbed my wrist.

It's a painful thing, having your arm yanked into ground while you're in the midst of a full-body evasive maneuver, a maneuver that you had put all of your momentum into. I let out a pained cry, feeling my muscles strain, feeling the grind of the bones in my shoulder scraping against each other in a type of contact that was never meant to be. But it was nothing compared to what followed.

So, yeah, have any of you guys ever had your arm crushed? No? Well, then let me just tell you now: _Worst. Thing. Ever._

Iwa ninja are just too goddamn crafty. Minato was tearing through their ranks, massacring them ten, twenty, maybe even thirty at time for every five secondshe was out there, and they needed him to _stop_ before they were utterly decimated. So what do they do? They look around, see a tiny little blond kid who couldn't possibly _not _be related to their assailant, correctly deduce that he would come flying to help her, and then they make her _wail_ like she's dying a horrible, horrible death.

Too bad they didn't account for the fact that that would only double his battle fury.

The air had just left my chest when Minato arrived in a blaze of bloody glory, putting knives through my attackers' heads like it was nobody's business. He was still halfway through a leap, the blood from his last kill still in the process of flying off his fingers, as my attackers fell to the ground in a spray of gore.

I collapsed in a heap, knees completely giving way as my vision lit up like a New Year's firework special.

"_Fuck!_" the hoarse expletive tore from my throat before I could help myself. Searing pain tore up my arm; I smashed my other fist into the ground and let out an unrestrained scream, pulling myself to my knees and trying to find a position that didn't send my shoulder-deep arm into excruciating, torturous pain.

"Suzu!" Minato grabbed my uninjured arm as I let out another wordless yell of utter agony, feeling tears begin to stream down my face. Even the deafening noise of the battlefield around us was overpowered by the sheer torment of it.

"Don't move, don't," he told me urgently, withdrawing his arm to run through a set of hand seals at lightning speed. He slammed his hands into the ground, which immediately turned to mush under his palms; he leaned over and quickly but carefully extracted me from the dirt.

"Don't look at it," he said, bracing my back against his chest, hand slick with blood as it shot up to cover my eyes. His voice was grim.

I let out a sob in response. Oh, God, it hurt.

"Harada, I'm withdrawing," Minato informed some person nearby, tone clipped. He must have gotten whatever approval he needed, because in the very next second I was being laid down on a smooth surface, some place where the air was cool and smelt of disinfectant. It was still dark; he still hadn't removed his hand.

"Mina—oh my God! What the _hell_—?"

"It was crushed and she needs help, _now,_" my cousin cut in tightly. The grip around my fingers tightened.

A short gasp. "We—we'll get into her surgery right away!" came the frantic reply, followed by the sound of metal clanging.

"Tohru! Come here, now!" a voice shouted.

"Grab the stabiliser seals!" another demanded.

"Are the clamps clean?!"

"Someone hurry up and put the poor kid out!"

The blackness blocking my sight withdrew for a short moment. Minato's face appeared, and through the tears and constant bursts of light searing across my vision, I latched onto the sight of those deep blue eyes, eyes that welled with strength and intelligence and fierce protective fury.

"We've got you," he murmured as a mask was put over my face.

* * *

**A/N: ...So, yeah. That's a thing.**

**Someone recently pointed out to me the improbability of Suzu so handily defeating a former Chuunin like Itsuki. To that, I ask you to consider the fact that the narrator of this story, while decently perceptive, is sometimes a little dense. So while it could just be that Suzu won through her own strong conviction, it's also entirely possible that someone was testing her and went easy… even if he hadn't _quite _anticipated the kick to the balls. But who knows?**

**(And besides, any kid who thinks running around the shopping district with a hood and nose-high collar is stealthy is just delusional.)**

**In other news, this story was recently added to the Worthwhile SIs community. I am so honored. Really, it's incredible that people are actually paying attention to this one little story floating out in a sea of self-inserts. Thank you so much.**

**Cheers, **

**Eiruiel**


	6. Age 9: Children at War: Part 2

**Published: 7/30/2014**

**Edited: 8/3/2014 to tweak wartime chuunin promotion requirements.**

* * *

**Age 9: Part 2**

"_These were probably some of the worst days of my life.__"_

_"I know."_

_"I... regret a lot of the things I did back then, Suzu."_

"_...I know. I do too... I'm sorry."_

"_No… I'm the one who should apologize. I know I wasn't the only one who was suffering back then. You were too."_

* * *

"How are you doing?"

I blinked as a warm can of coffee was placed in front of me. I put my book down and picked it up with my right hand, smiling when I saw the tab had been popped for me.

"Where did you get these?" I asked as Minato sat down across from me, his own drink in hand. He smiled.

"Auntie Reiko sent them," he informed before taking a sip. I followed suit, relishing the taste of something that had actual _flavor_. A month on goopy mission rations left the palate wanting for many things... a bit of pepper being one of them. Or maybe even just some salt, that would help.

"How is she?" I asked, sitting back and letting out a contented sigh. It had a been a peaceful day today—just keeping up the camp, maintaining weapons, that sort of thing. It had gotten very quiet after Minato's Yellow Flash debut three weeks ago. Not that I blamed them; I'd be scared to send anyone within a thousand miles of him after that slaughter.

"Worried," was the frowning reply. "She's not going to rest until Uncle gets his hands on you himself."

"But they've fixed it wonderfully," I protested, looking down at the sling where my bandaged arm was resting. "It doesn't even hurt now."

In truth, it was lucky that I'd managed to keep my arm at all. If Minato hadn't immediately rushed me to the field hospital, the medics had told me, they would have had to cut it off. The only reason they had been able to save it was because they'd gotten to me literally seconds after it had happened. Personally, I was in awe that they'd managed to fix it at all. Iryou-ninjutsu… it was amazing what these guys could do with it. Since my arrival here I had witnessed gashes and open wounds stretching out two and a half feet across close up in a matter of minutes. And that was to say nothing of the three limbs that I had seen being reattached in the following hours. I already knew that chakra was capable of amazing things, but man… chakra was capable of amazing things.

Minato's face twisted contritely. "Suzu, I am so sorry—" he began.

"It's fine," I reassured him for the umpteenth time, faintly resisting the urge to roll my eyes. It had been very sweet of him to apologize the first couple times, but now, after three weeks of this… not so much. "It's not your fault."

"But I promised I'd keep them away from you." He sulked, scuffing his heel in the dirt almost childishly. I smiled. That was the thing with Minato; he was a total perfectionist. Just keeping me alive wasn't enough, apparently. In his mind, I should have come out with not a single scratch.

"Because of you, I was saved from being disabled for the rest of my life," I pointed out, not mentioning the fact that I wouldn't be even be alive to be disabled if he hadn't been around. "Anyway, how's everyone else doing?"

I had been sending my regards home through Minato for the past three weeks, being obviously incapable of writing at the moment. It was supremely irritating; I resolved to start working on ambidexterity as soon as possible.

"They're fine." Minato sighed at my apparently feeble consolation before pulling out a thin scroll from his belt pouch and unrolling it. "Let's see… Shiori took her field medic exam and passed last week. Jinta's just come back from his courier mission. Hiroto lost a tooth. Tenrou and Heiwako got in trouble again… they never learn, do they?"

"Evidently not," I laughed at that. Even after countless _training sessions _with Auntie, did they still not get it? Or maybe they just didn't care...

"Oh, and she mentioned your teammate Akihiko has stopped by several times already," Minato added. "He slept over the entirety of his first week back."

"That sounds like something he would do." I smiled, feeling a bit wistful at the thought of my best friends. This was the first time in our lives we'd ever been separated for this long.

"Is he alright?" I asked. Yoshiya was clever enough not to get in over his head, but Akihiko would charge straight in without a second thought if he thought he could get away with it.

"He's perfectly fine," my cousin assured me. "She wrote here that he has something he desperately needs to tell you, but she didn't say what."

I raised my eyebrows at that. Something he desperately needed to tell me? I had no idea…

"Anyway, I told her we'll be home next week, and she says she'll cook a mountain of food for us when we get back." Minato grinned hugely, obviously anticipating a the opportunity to eat like a pig. I didn't know what it was with men around here, but they ate like they were ten times their actual size. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that they were ninjas? Now that I thought about, even though I was a girl I _had _been eating a ton more since becoming a Genin...

"You're such a freeloader," I snorted, though I was secretly glad to know I would be eating real food soon. Thank God. "You don't even technically live at the House anymore but you're always there eating our food anyway."

Minato had bought his own one-story home and moved to the east edge of the compound before he'd been deployed, but that had done nothing whatsoever to prevent him from invading the House on a daily basis. I suspected that he just didn't want to cook for himself.

"It's lonely to eat meals on your own," Minato protested. "Besides, I know you guys like having me around—Haruka cried buckets when she found out I was moving out. Think of how much it'd break her heart if I didn't come visit."

"Do you think I'll be out of this by the time we get back?" I asked instead of replying to that, motioning to my sling. "It makes it look worse than it really is at this point." Minato paused and considered me thoughtfully.

"The scarring's faded quite a bit, so they'll probably let you take off the bandages today or tomorrow," he said at a length. "They'll want to keep it immobile a little while longer, though."

"Physical therapy's gonna be great with this," I sighed glumly. "Well, at least I'll be motivated to get my dominant hand back in working order..."

"Calligraphy will probably be beyond you for a while, but you might be able to pester them into letting you write with a pen," Minato suggested. "Give it a shot when you see them tomorrow."

I quirked a brow. "If you think pestering the medics is a good idea," I said with a shrug. Most shinobi seemed to have an almost pathological aversion to any and all things pertaining to medicine, but I honestly was happy to do whatever the doctors told me. No way was I going to risk any bit of my health ever by ignoring a professional.

We passed the evening in easy conversation before turning in for the night. The next day I was permitted to remove my bandages, just as Minato predicted. I requested—nicely—to allowed to try writing, to which the medics allowed so long as I didn't strain too hard. The days before the official end of Minato's rotation blended together in a blur of reading, trying to write, eating mission goop, and sleeping. There was a small scare when the camp was put on high alert after an Iwa scout was spotted, but nothing ever came of it. Soon Minato and I were packed and ready to head home.

It would have taken a week for us to arrive if we'd gone at my pace, but Minato gave me piggybacks whenever I tired, so our time in transit was cut down to five days instead. Several others were returning with us, so we moved a bit more slowly as a rule of thumb. I was pretty sure if he'd been on his own it would have taken Minato three days tops.

I had been dozing slightly with my face in his shoulder when he woke me with a wiggle and told me we'd arrived. I blinked and shifted, looking around his head at the gates. Several people, both ninja and civilian, were crowded around waiting for their loved ones.

"I think I see Uncle," Minato said, pointing to a speck of yellow in a sea of brown and black heads. He jumped down from his branch and bounded over to him, weaving through the masses easily. I sat up straight and peered over his head to try and get a glimpse of Uncle Souhei.

"Uncle!" Minato grinned when he slid to a stop in front of our bespectacled father figure. Uncle Souhei smiled at the sight of us and immediately gathered us in a hug, which was actually _really _unusual—Uncle Souhei was not the touchy type.

"I'm glad to see you two back," he told us, squeezing Minato's shoulder and reaching up to plant a kiss on my forehead. I blushed a bit. "We were worried."

"But we're here now, and we're alright," Minato assured him. "Right, Suzu?"

"Right," I agreed, giving my best smile. Uncle Souhei's expression sobered; he regarded me with a look at was almost… sad.

"That's good," he murmured, putting a hand on both of our heads and looking at us both with the kind of face only parents could make. My eyes began to water a bit; I just about melted from all of the love I felt right then.

We headed back to the House via roof-hopping. I enjoyed the view of the village from my perch on Minato's back, happy to see such familiar sights after a long, long time away. I could only imagine how Minato felt, having been gone for eleven more months than me. After spending so many hours submerged in constant tension, warily waiting for the next bomb to fall, to breathe in the peaceful Leaf Village air was positively cathartic. We both let out a long sigh at the same time, making Uncle Souhei smile when we glanced at each other with a laugh.

Minato finally set me down when we arrived in front of the House, neither of us wanting to alarm Auntie Reiko into thinking I'd been rendered incapable of walking, too. According to Uncle Souhei she'd been on pins and needles ever since my due date passed and I hadn't returned.

Sliding the door open, Uncle let us in first before calling out a short _tadaima_. Auntie Reiko was before us in a heartbeat, lip aquiver. No words were exchanged as she swept me right off the ground in a bone crushing hug, though she was very careful not to catch my arms in it. She only spared an arm for Minato after she'd squeezed me half to death.

"I was worried," she murmured into my hair. I found myself tearing up again for the second time that day as I hugged her back, fighting back the sniffles.

"Thank you for bringing her home, Minato," Uncle said quietly, putting a hand on my cousin's shoulder. Minato just smiled.

We all took a moment to compose ourselves before exiting the genkan and entering the House proper. Several of our cousins were gathered in the sitting doing various different tasks, reading and writing, talking and playing.

A hush fell when Minato and I appeared in the doorway. Then…

"Suzu-neechan! Minato-niichan!" Haruka shrieked, hauling herself up off the floor before charging at us, her little pigtails bouncing as she ran. Minato laughed and caught the little girl when she threw herself at him. Everyone got up and crowded around us.

It was good to be home.

* * *

In the next few days I spent a lot of time just soaking in the attention from my family, eating popsicles and daydreaming after I went to the requisite physical therapy sessions at the hospital. A lot of my younger cousins spent an absurd amount of time poking my arm—which was finally out of its sling—and tracing the light webs of scar tissue with fascination in their eyes. Tenrou and Jinta thought it was "wicked cool," though I could tell the girls were a little frightened. That was fair enough, though. Even though my arm had only gone under a minimal change in appearance—you could only see something was wrong with it if you were staring really hard—it still served as a very real reminder that disfiguring injuries did happen, and that they happened to anyone, even little girls.

Akihiko spent a lot time at the House, too. Just seconds after we'd arrived home he had come charging through the door like there was a herd of rabid buffalo chasing after him. Even though he was only slightly taller than me he had picked me up and swung me around and blathered _oh it's so great you're back _and _I was really worried _and _oh my God by the way you should know!_

After prying him off me and relocating to the veranda overlooking the yard with ice cream bars in hand, Akihiko elaborated: Apparently, while he had been away, he had managed to unravel a huge attack. I didn't understand his explanation completely because it was punctuated with a lot of _boom _and _fwashafwuu_ sound effects, but from what I could tell he had noticed a disturbed patch of ground and had ended up unearthing a huge network of explosive tags. Half of his squad ended up getting blown up and the Iwa ninja behind it had to spring the trap before they were fully prepared, and since Akihiko had already been on the scene kicking enemy mooks off of cliffs when the responders from the fort they were delivering supplies for arrived, they had assumed he was one of the chuunin they had heard was coming. He apparently had just rolled with it and ended up putting together an attack plan that drove off the enemy ninja. The fort personnel had been so shocked to find out he was a Genin that he got treated with a unanimous field promotion; when he came back to the village he had handed in no less than seven letters of rec nominating him to become a wartime chuunin.

"You're lying," I accused flatly. "It hasn't even been half a year since we graduated. There has to be some sort of rule against that."

"No, I'm not!" Akihiko protested. "It's allowed! There's some sort of war clause thing that waives the chuunin Exam requirement if enough criteria is met! Or something like that."

I shook my head. "Ojisan, are you hearing this?" I asked of Uncle Souhei, who was sitting nearby and feeding one of the babies. He looked up and raised an eyebrow at me.

"Section three of the Emergency Wartime Powers of the Armed Forces Bill: Let those who are registered shinobi of the Leaf receive whatever rise in rank deemed necessary by the Board if the following criteria are met: at least one independent instance of combat displaying exemplary skill and judgement, a letter of recommendation confirming the validity of this instance, a minimum of four separate nominations, and a passing score on a test of proficiency administered according to the standards listed in Section 4, clause C1," he recited.

..._What? _I felt my ice cream slip through my fingers; it landed with a splat on my lap.

"Ooh, ooh, yeah! The proficiency test, I took that last week!" Akihiko said eagerly. "It was a good test because there wasn't any writing or anything, they just took me out to a field and had me do some exercises and a simulation mission. I'm really awesome at those kinds of tests."

"I… you're serious?" I asked weakly. But… there was no way in hell they made Akihiko a chuunin. I mean, I knew he was a good fighter, and I knew the standards for promotion were more lax during times of war, but… _Akihiko_? As a _chuunin_? The brute-force smack-it-til-it's-fixed guy?

"Of course I am." Akihiko crossed his arms and grinned triumphantly. "I got my own flak jacket and everything. I'm just not wearing it right now."

I looked down and picked up my ice cream, which was now covered in bits of cotton and hair. Akihiko was promoted to chuunin on his first mission? How was that _possible?_ He had just… what, just jumped into action? He didn't freeze up or get worried? He didn't… panic?

"That's… really amazing," I mumbled, staring at my bare feet as I wrapped the ice cream bar in its previously discarded plastic sleeve. I would have never expected that from him. "What did Yoshiya say?"

There was a brief silence. I looked up and saw Akihiko's smiling face melt into a more troubled expression.

"He's not back yet," he said.

"Oh." I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. "I… he probably just got delayed like I did, then, didn't he?" I asked. For some reason the words seemed a bit hollow, even to my ears. Still, there was no cause for worry, was there? Yoshiya was smart. I knew that already—he wouldn't get in over his head. If something happened, if he got attacked, it would be okay. Akihiko had been able to keep a cool head, so Yoshiya could do the same... Those two, however different, were equally skilled and equally clever.

Akihiko just looked away.

"Yeah," he said.

* * *

Saturday, two in the afternoon. Auntie Reiko was out supervising a House field trip to the annual ninjutsu exhibition; almost everyone was gone except for Uncle Souhei and the babies. The yard was totally empty and perfect for training.

Double checking my gloves and making sure the cloth covered my fingers up to the base of my nails—they were longer than the standard tipless gloves—I picked up the coil of wire next to me and stood up, cutting two lengths. Since it had been nearly a month and a half since I had last done this and I wasn't quite sure how my arm was going to hold up, I decided to attach blunted weights instead of shuriken to the ends.

Wrapping the wire around my fingers and taking a deep breath, I swung my right arm out, then my left. I spent a few minutes just getting a feel for the technique again, keeping the weights swinging in a synchronized arcs. After I was sure I wouldn't accidentally smack myself in the head, I began to go into a couple of warm-up maneuvers, crossing my arms and changing positions, ducking under and jumping over the wires in a strange parody of double dutch. It probably looked silly, but learning to move around your wires was essential if you ever wanted to become combat worthy with them.

A lot of my family members wondered why I was so fixed on going into the wire branch of shurikenjutsu. For regular people—that is, anyone who wasn't an Uchiha—its uses were extremely limited. Most non-Sharingan users couldn't utilize more than two lines per hand, and most of the time the ended up swinging them around like what basically amounted to weaker and less effective flails. Wires, they said, just took too much precision for a regular person to handle.

I practiced snagging things for a while, tree branches and little rods I kicked into the air, maybe even the occasional squirrel. There was something I wanted to try with this move, but I had never done it for fear of slicing myself into bits. Today, though, I felt reckless. I had just found out the jock of my friend group was already jumping up the ranks, after all; of _course _I wanted to advance too. Nothing would change if I just kept on the way I was now.

Dropping the wire in my right hand, I returned to swinging the one in my left to a lazy loop. Then I concentrated and began molding chakra, moving it through my arm before letting it seep into the wire. Then I formed the two currents needed for chakra flow; a familiar hum filled the air next to me.

Okay, kids, here is today's aesop: _Do not experiment with techniques you haven't fully thought through_. Or, for that matter, _Don't try mixing techniques you haven't fully mastered. _Though I could use chakra flow well enough to cut things, I was far from an expert. And that went doubly so for wires.

Still, driven by ambition, I tossed one of my light metal rods into the air and swung my arm out as though I was going to catch it like I always did. The wire did wrap around it. Then it sliced right through it.

I let out a pleased gasp, happy to see my idea had worked. That only lasted for a second, though, because then that lovely cutting wire came hurtling right back at me. I fumblingly tried to control the return swing, but the angle was wrong, and it was going too fast for me to adjust—there wasn't the usual resistance this time. I had cut something, not caught it. The wire wasn't dragging anything with it. I frantically began letting the end wrapped around my finger unravel, but it was too late for that.

Just then, three shuriken shot out from nowhere, intercepting the line and neatly severing it into four harmless little pieces. The bit still attached to my hand fluttered in the air for a bit before settling lightly on my skin and leaving an angry red welt. I let out a hiss and cut the chakra.

"That," Uncle Souhei said, suddenly looming over me, "was very, _very _stupid, Misuzu."

I looked up with wide eyes and swallowed. Uh oh. Full name.

"Do you understand what just happened?" he asked lowly, seizing my wrist and pointing to the tiny line the wire had left. His eyeglasses glinted dangerously in the sunlight. "Thank God _right now_ that this is the only wound you got. You could have just _decapitated _yourself."

I let out a tiny squeak. Did he just say—_decapitate_?

"There is a reason no one around here but the Uchiha uses chakra flow with wires," he informed, expression tight. "I thought that was the first thing you learned about wire shurikenjutsu: _the lines are volatile_. It takes a _slight breeze _to alter its course, even when weighted. Why would you give something you can't control the ability to slice through nearly any substance?" he asked. "Are you _intentionally _trying to kill yourself?"

"I-I," I stuttered, dumbfounded. "I didn't—I didn't think—"

_Fwap_. I cringed as a thin switch appeared in his hand and slapped onto my wrist, right over the cut.

"Ninjas must _always _think," Uncle cut in sharply, blue eyes like chips of ice. I gulped and nodded rapidly, feeling like I was seconds away from wetting myself. _This _was the reason why Auntie Reiko was usually in charge of punishments—Uncle Souhei was damn scary when he was mad.

"I understand," I said smally, hunching my shoulders and biting my lip. Uncle maintained the severity in his expression for a second longer before letting out a sigh, pushing his glasses up and rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"Just be more careful, Suzu," he said, dropping his arms and fixing me with a disappointed look. "That was no joke."

"I didn't know that using chakra flow and wires was bad," I mumbled at the ground. "I thought… it would be clever. You could use it to cut things from far away without having to use ninjutsu."

"Yes, many people think the same," Uncle Souhei agreed, motioning for me to follow him. We went back towards the house and sat down on the veranda, where he picked up a piece of wire and held it up. It swayed gently, bending in whichever direction the wind pulled it.

"Civilians often tell their children not to play with sharp knives," Uncle told me softly as we watched the little steel string dancing with the breeze. "Of course, as a ninja clan, we let our kids run around with knives all the time. But the principle of it still applies—don't let the young and foolish mess around with tools, however useful they are, that can hurt them."

I flushed and looked down at my lap.

"Suzu. Where did you learn chakra flow?"

I bit my lip and wondered how to answer that. In a tree at the park four years ago? By watching a fictional story about ninja and remembering the explanation of it given in one of the episodes?

"I found it out by accident," I finally said, settling on a half-truth. Half-truths were the best lies. "When I was doing the leaf-sticking exercise."

Uncle raised an eyebrow. "You discovered chakra flow on your forehead?"

"No," I mumbled, plucking a piece of grass and sticking it to my palm. "I did it like this." I coated my other hand and slapped it on top; the grass shot out and embedded itself in a tree across the yard.

Uncle Souhei stared at it. Then he stared at me.

"You've been playing with this for a while, haven't you," he said more than asked, tone flat.

"When I was five," I informed. "That was the first time I did it."

Uncle Souhei's gaze sharpened as though I had said something more significant than it actually was. He looked down at me with a calculating gaze; I could practically see the gears whirring in his head.

A few moments of silence passed. I began to fidget uncomfortably under his gaze. Then, after what seemed like a lifetime of waiting, he sighed and looked away. When he turned his head back to me it seemed like he was looking at me like I was a whole different person. A small, almost sad smile spread across his face before he held up with wire.

"Funny thing about chakra flow," he began, looping it around his index finger. "If you do it right…"

The wire lit up and he yanked. His finger stayed in place.

"...You'll never cut yourself." He smirked.

"What?" I demanded, astounded. "But—how can—if you can do _that, _why aren't there a million wire masters running around slicing through things like cheese?"

Uncle Souhei shrugged. "Well, this is a technique you can only learn as a child. It requires your chakra pathways to have a flexibility that just can't be achieved as an adult. But if you've already got down the basics of chakra flow as a child, well…" He raised an eyebrow.

My jaw dropped. Was he saying what I thought he was saying?

"When Namikazes turn out masters they tend to be in odd places," he informed nonchalantly, twirling the steel thread between his thumb and forefinger. "Barrier ninjutsu, archery… more recently we've got someone trying his hand at fuuinjutsu. I guess it wouldn't be impossible to have a wire master, too."

"Teach me!" I all but begged, latching onto his arm. "_Please!_"

Uncle Souhei laughed and handed me the wire.

It was a while before I realized that if he knew how to use chakra flow without cutting himself, he must've learned it as a child, too.

* * *

We were halfway through dinner when someone came flying through the open window in the kitchen. There was a crash, followed by the sound of pots and pans clanging on the ground. Everyone stopped with food halfway in their mouths, glancing at each other and then toward the kitchen doorway as more racket followed.

"Suzu!" Akihiko appeared in the doorway, sweating and panting, holding a saucepan in one hand. I stared; he hastily shoved it onto the counter behind the doorway.

"Yoshiya's back," he informed, breathing heavily. I gasped and dropped my chopsticks, shooting to my feet.

"Really?" I exclaimed, grinning widely. "That's great! Is he—"

Akihiko looked at me. I stopped mid-sentence and quieted, taking in the stiffness of his posture, the hard set of his mouth, the fear in his widened eyes—

"Suzu!" Minato exclaimed as I jerked away from the table and darted forward, feeling the blood drain from my face. Akihiko turned and sprinted away, back through the kitchen and out the window he came. I ran after him, grabbing the doorframe as I turned before clearing the kitchen and shooting out the window in a single leap.

Akihiko grabbed my wrist as soon as I landed. We only took a second to inhale before we were off, hurtling through the village streets like a pair of maniacs. Passersby shouted as we tore past them, knocking over whoever was unfortunate enough to be in our way, chakra boosting us to nearly shunshin speeds.

The run to Konoha General took both a lifetime and a few seconds. We exploded into the lobby, startling the few people who were still about; Akihiko ran up to the receptionist and demanded to know where Yoshiya Miyazawa was. When the lady at the desk tried to say something about _still in surgery _and _only family_ he slammed his hands onto the counter and ground out slowly, "_Where—is—he?_"

As soon as the woman had spoken the room number Akihiko seized my hand once more. He dragged me down some hallway at a slightly more controlled brisk walk, grip tightening painfully around my fingers. I swallowed, at this point feeling a bit frightened not because of Yoshiya, but Akihiko—I had never seen him like this.

When we arrived outside of the OR where our teammate was, no one but a lone brown-haired chuunin was standing there. He was shirtless, reddening bandages wrapped all around his middle, neck bent as he stared at the ground; he was clinging to an IV stand with with left hand. Akihiko ran up to him.

"Do you know what's wrong with Yoshiya?" he asked between huge gulps of air, breathlessly squeezing the life out of my hand. I bit my lip, feeling my own knuckles whiten over his. The chuunin started and looked down at us, having evidently been lost in his own thoughts.

"He—he was stabbed. In the stomach," the chuunin murmured, one hand holding his side as he turned to face us. "I—he was the only one I managed to grab after they attacked us."

"Did… did you guys accidentally end up on the front lines, too?" I asked quietly, already dreading the answer. The chuunin looked at me, eyes zeroing in on my left arm. Slowly, he nodded.

"Where did they get him?" Akihiko wanted to know. "How deep was it? What did the medics say?"

"I… there was an exit wound. Through his back," the chuunin said, furrowing his brow before shrugging helplessly. "That's all I've got, though. I passed out when I got to the gate, so I don't really…"

Akihiko's mouth opened. Sensing an incoming torrent of abuse, I quickly tugged him over to the wall, gripping his arm with my other hand before sinking to the floor, pulling us both down into sitting positions.

"Let's just wait here," I murmured anxiously as I released his arm but continued to hold his hand. Akihiko looked at me, closed his mouth, and then just brought his knees up before wordlessly burying his face in his arm.

Minutes ticked into hours as we sat there unmoving. Long after my behind had gone numb and Akihiko's head had lolled limply onto my shoulder, we were still waiting. In the privacy of the empty hallway—the chuunin had left a while ago—I felt tears begin to well up in my eyes.

There was no way that they were still working on him. Could surgeries even last that long? Were they actually still trying or had they given up and just not come out to tell us? I felt myself begin to hiccup as all rational thought left me.

That night, I remembered thinking I should have been dying as well. I had gotten away from the war unscathed, but Yoshiya hadn't—why was that? Why was I okay when he was not? I went out there and came back with a couple of lines on my arm; he came back with a hole in his gut. How was that _fair?_

"Suzu!" a familiar voice exclaimed from down the hall. "There you are…"

Minato ended up carrying us both back to the House, Akihiko in his arms and me on his back. I cried into his shirt the whole way, clutching his shoulders and gasping _it's not fair, it's not fair, it's not fair_…

When we got back, Akihiko was put in a spare futon in the boys' room. I refused to go bed until Auntie promised she would wake me up the second we had news, and even then after I had gotten under the covers I tossed and turned and occasionally sobbed into my pillow. It was incredible I managed not to wake anybody else up.

That night was one of the longest in my life.

* * *

**A/N: I don't like the first scene with Akihiko. It's short and it's awkward and it kills the flow of the chapter, but I couldn't find another way to put it in. Sorry. But hey, nice chunk of Souhei today!**

**On another note, Glory has hit one thousand views. That is incredible beyond words. Thank you all so much for your support. It pains me to tell you all updates are about to slow significantly—school is starting for me soon and I have a lot of summer assignments to get working on. Just know that I have a lot planned for this story and that I still am very much writing it! Just... not as quickly anymore.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	7. Age 9: Children at War: Part 3

**Published: 8/2/2014**

* * *

**Age 9: Part 3**

_There are no words to say about this chapter of my life._

* * *

"Hey, lazy butt, wake up!"

I collided with my bedroom floor and had a single thought: How the hell did Akihiko get in this time?

"West side, second floor, there's a loose panel next to the storage room window," my teammate explained impatiently. "Now stop lying around and get ready! Yoshiya's due home any minute now!"

I was up in a heartbeat, yanking my pajama shirt off and chucking it at his face, grabbing my clothes off the dresser and launching myself into the bathroom. I was cleaned and dressed in a matter of seconds.

"Let's go, come on!" I yelled unnecessarily, throwing open my window and jumping out. Akihiko was right behind me; he barely remembered to shut it behind him in his haste. We raced to the eastern gate and arrived in a massive cloud of dust and leaves, having kicked up a storm with our barely-controlled shunshins.

The Chuunin gatekeepers took one look at us and laughed knowingly.

"The infamous Mudstorm Trio's due for a reunion, I take it?" the older one called, smiling. Akihiko spun and shook a fist at him, dust settling in his hair.

"That name is so unbelievably lame! I don't know where you people got that whole Mudstorm thing from, but you better knock it off! " he threatened.

"Please, you three are famous for turning any landscape you visit into a splattered pit of ooze," the other Chuunin retorted. "You can't be anything but the Mudstorm Trio."

"Yoshiya!" I called, ignoring the squabble next to me in favor of waving my arm wildly as a pinprick of color appeared in the distance. Akihiko whirled around, face lighting up; the speck grew exponentially larger and larger until suddenly we were being crushed in a giant hug, our third and final teammate's arms squeezing us together until we had to cry mercy.

"Welcome home!" I grinned hugely, panting slightly, as Yoshiya released us. He grinned back.

"What the hell took you so long? You're a day away from the Chuunin Exams' registration deadline!" Akihiko exclaimed, delivering a punch to his best friend's shoulder. "Your kids would have killed you if they missed a promotion again."

"Ow! Knock it off, you stupid taijutsu freak, that hurts," Yoshiya scowled, shoving his friend and rubbing his arm defensively. "And I'd like to see you do better! Especially when you have trouble magnets like mine…"

"Here, I brought the forms," I told him, withdrawing the scroll I'd shoved into my supply pouch and handing it to him. Yoshiya immediately lit up again.

"Thanks, Suzu," he said warmly, throwing an arm around my shoulder in a half-hug. "Are we all still on for dinner at Moritake's tonight?" he asked.

"Ooh! I almost forgot about that!" Akihiko jumped and looked to me eagerly. "Are we?"

"Of course," I scoffed, pretending to be offended as I crossed my arms. "Do you think I would forget?"

"Naw," Yoshiya laughed, knocking his head gently against mine. "You were always the most responsible out of the three of us."

"So true, that," Akihiko agreed. Then he paused. "Well, except for that time… oh God, remember that thing at the capital? With the squirrel?"

Just the thought of it made me burst out laughing. "Niichan's face when we told him the daimyo was under attack by a rodent!"

Akihiko and I melted into riotous guffaws. Yoshiya smiled and turned to his students, who were still flagging on the horizon.

"Hey, you three!" he hollered. "I'm not getting any younger! If you don't speed it up, I might forget to enter you in the Chuunin Exams!"

A distant shout of dismay met our ears.

"You are a cruel and unusual master, my friend," I told him as solemnly as I could, trying to smother another fit of hysterics and failing; the three of us were in tears before long. We might have gone a bit overboard laughing at nothing, but that was okay, wasn't it? We hadn't seen one another in a long time, and nothing was better to celebrate a reunion than sharing a good laugh with your best friends.

"Suzu."

I blinked as a sudden wave of disorientation hit me. Yoshiya and Akihiko twisted and blurred; their voices faded as the dirt below vanished and the blue sky disappeared.

Auntie Reiko was hovering above me, the moon illuminating her figure as she knelt at the side of my futon. Years under the same roof allowed me to read the glint in her eye before coherence had even returned to me.

"He's gone," she said unnecessarily.

I stared dumbly at her, cheeks still wet with mirth, because I had been crying with laughter just a moment ago, hadn't I? Yoshiya had been gone for months on that mission in Tea Country, and we were at the gate joking around, waiting for his Genin to catch up while recollecting the time we saw a squirrel assault the feudal lord—

The air was still and dry, heavy with the resonant silence of deep night. The syncopated rhythm of three pairs of respirating lungs rang out beside me; a distant cicada sounded out a low tone, a line of bass in an invisible nighttime symphony. I shut my eyes again and saw Yoshiya handing three thirteen-year-olds their registration forms for the Chuunin Exams, utterly radiant with pride.

I'd never had a crueler dream in my life.

* * *

The funeral was a small one. People were being killed all the time these days, so there was neither the time nor the resources to make it a huge occasion. Konoha was at war, after all, and the General Forces' cemetery was badly overbooked; we had been told to get out by nine so the next group could come. They had a child to bury, too.

Akihiko and I stood apart from the rest of the attendees, unable to look anyone in the eye, not even each other. We said nothing when we first arrived; we were wordless when they shovelled the dirt; we departed in silence when the day's ninth hour came. I ignored any attempts at conversation my family members made and went off into the village to be on my lonesome instead.

I spent a few hours at the park, sullenly kicking on the swing and giving death glares to anyone who tried to come near me. It hurt to think too much, so I tried not to, but every time I began to unwind my thoughts would drift swords and blood and warm smiles—

I cried a lot, too. It gave me a headache, but I think that was more from dehydration than anything. I hadn't eaten at all today, either, but I didn't really care for food at the moment. If my stomach was empty, that was fine. No, it was more than fine—it was fitting. Because inside, I felt nothing.

I felt empty.

It was sunset by the time someone who knew me came by. It was a good thing he found me; I probably would have sat there all night if I'd been left on my own. You don't think about moving around when you're drowning in despair, after all. You only think of trying to keep your head above the water.

"Suzu-chan."

It was a familiar sound, that voice. I slowly lifted my head, turning it to the side; Itsuki Mikawaya was sitting on the swing next to me, hat in his hands, ponytail hanging over his shoulder. I twitched my lips in a sad attempt at a greeting smile before quickly looking away, not wanting to see whatever expression he had on his face. Confusion meant that I would have to explain; pity meant that I would feel worse for myself.

I didn't really put up much resistance when he took my arm and dragged me to my feet. As long as I didn't have to talk, I didn't care what he did. Itsuki seemed to understand because the ensuing walk was one of silence. Eventually we ended up at his fruit store; I was directed to my usual stool while he went off into the back room.

"No dango today," he said when he returned. "Just tea."

"Thanks," I had the presence of mind to mutter when he handed a cup to me. Itsuki shrugged and sat down on the counter, bracing one arm behind him and taking a sip from his drink with the other.

"Look at you on that stool," he suddenly laughed. "I remember when you had to climb to get up there. You've gotten pretty big."

I just stared at him; Itsuki's smile faded. He let out a sigh and put his drink down before leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

"Funeral clothes today," he observed, eyes full of knowing. "Friend of yours?"

I couldn't help it—I snorted.

"Friend," I repeated dryly. As if a word like friend could encompass all of the being that had been Yoshiya Miyazawa. "Yeah, sure. Friend… best friend."

"So it was a best friend funeral, was it?" Itsuki asked, smiling with false humor. "Those are great, aren't they? Standing off to the side, not looking anyone in the face, family members awkwardly following you around when you clearly don't want to talk…"

I cracked a smile then. I knew there was a reason why I liked Itsuki; he knew how things were.

"So I haven't seen you around lately," he began, jumping from the subject so smoothly it was like we hadn't been talking previously at all. "Where've you been?"

"Just camping out west, nothing much," I drawled sardonically, grateful for the distraction. "Met some Stone ninja. Real friendly, that lot."

"Oh, yeah, bet they are," Itsuki replied just as wryly. "Gave you a nice arm tattoo, huh? Pretty brave of you to agree to one that big."

"Yeah, well, I didn't get much of a choice on that one." I grimaced, not quite up to joking around about that particular experience just yet. Maybe in a few months… or years.

"Well, they can get pretty pushy, too." Itsuki nodded, easily sliding past the potential mood killer with the skill of a seasoned conversational warrior. "Don't worry, it's not too noticeable. Did you go out there with friends?"

"There were some Chuunin, but they kind of got beheaded," I admitted, pursing my lips. "I was lucky one of my older cousins was around to save me. And that he's insanely good at fighting."

Itsuki's expression sobered.

"You're talking about Minato, aren't you?" he asked. "Minato Namikaze."

I blinked, surprised.

"Yeah, how'd you know?" I queried, bewildered. Itsuki _was_ uncannily perceptive, but that was a pretty unfounded leap of logic even for him.

"Everybody knows." Itsuki shrugged, threading his fingers together. "The Battle of Tatsumi River. They say it was a massacre."

Well, there was no denying that. In the few brief moments I had seen him fighting Minato had been a killing machine. He must've done in a few hundred shinobi at the _least_.

"He was pretty brutal," I confessed. "It was actually… really scary. But he's so nice and goofy at home. I'd never seen him like that before… ever." I mean, it was one thing to know from an anime show that your cousin-big brother was actually a crazily dangerous killer, but after years of watching him do the most mundane things, cleaning floors and listening to him make up ridiculous jutsu names…

"If anyone was destined to lead a double life, it'd be a ninja," Itsuki replied, looking sad. "Don't think of him any differently, okay? I don't know him personally, but I've met enough to people to know it would hurt."

I looked away.

"That's kind of hard," I said quietly. "Because… he was so bloody. He was covered in it."

I had spent a lot of time thinking about that fight. We'd spent a whole month out of Konoha, after all, and when I had been recovering there hadn't been much for me to do besides lie down and rest. I had had lots of free time—and everyone knows that an excess of free time means an excess of brooding.

I wonder how he slept at night, knowing he was drenched in the blood of so many. How did anyone sleep, for that matter, knowing somebody's life was on his hands?

"A lot of the times they don't," Itsuki said, and it took me a moment to realize I had been thinking aloud. Itsuki has a distant look on his face, as though he was remembering something from long ago. I quickly shut my mouth and waited for him to speak—that was always the look he got when he was thinking about his ninja days.

"Hey, listen…" he began, looking more somber than his usual. "This might not mean anything to you yet, but it will before long—I'm certain of that. It won't be long until you're out there killing yourself, you know, so I just wanted to tell you…"

I swallowed and tried to imagine what it was like to be a killer. To be a ninja.

…to be Minato.

"You're going have sleepless nights," Itsuki told me. "They'll come and you can't stop them. Killing or seeing your comrades be killed… the dead are going to come to you at night. But don't run. Don't try to look away."

Itsuki sighed and leaned back again.

"Don't look away," he repeated, "or you'll end up like me."

"End up like you?" I echoed, not sure what that meant. In all of the time I'd known Itsuki he'd been all in all a decent and thoughtful person, helpful and kind. He could be aloof and defensive at times, but who wasn't? Being like him didn't seem like a terribly awful fate…

"Stuck behind a counter peddling fruit to civvies," he explained drolly. "Sitting all day. Reading. Watching. Cooking and eating… remembering… wishing you could be out there fulfilling your dreams. Dreams you can't get to anymore."

Dreams… I looked at my feet.

"I can't be a ninja anymore," Itsuki told me, smiling bitterly. "I wish I could."

"Why can't you?" I asked quietly. In the four years we'd known each other he'd never told me why he'd stopped.

"I'd go insane," Itsuki laughed; it was a raw and bleeding sound. He made the crazy motion, pointing to his head and rotating his finger in a circle. "I've already gone insane once before. That's why they discharged me, and that's why I can never go back to the Forces. I'm too unstable."

"You? Unstable?" I repeated before I could help myself, incredulous. He was one of the most grounded and sharp-witted men I'd ever met in my life. In fact, around here with all of these quirky ninja, people like Itsuki were _ridiculously_ hard to find.

"Oh, trust me, I'm not making it up," Itsuki assured me wryly. "I live a life very, very removed from all of my triggers and stressors. I've improved a lot, but… well, you wouldn't have liked to see me in proximity to a training field back then. I remember there being days when even the sound of metal clanging was enough to set me off."

"Should I stop asking you about all of this ninja stuff?" I asked, alarmed. I'd never expected mental illness to be the cause behind Itsuki's "retirement." It was extremely discomfiting to know I had been pestering him for the story for years now that I knew.

"Don't worry, I don't mind." Itsuki smiled sadly. "In a way, you've been strangely therapeutic for me."

I just shut my mouth and frowned worriedly.

"Anyway, the point is—well, whether it's someone you killed or someone you know who's died, you'll be bothered. Deeply. But you just need to… Oh, I don't know how to say it. Just… take your night scares when they come and remember that there are living people to see in the morning. Don't forget there are people around you." Itsuki shrugged awkwardly. "…Yeah. That's my lesson for the day. Just look forward to the daytime."

We dropped into silence; I looked outside and saw that dusk had long since faded into darkness. Stars were blinking in the sky, halfway shadowed by thin wisps of clouds.

I turned my head away and stared into my tea; a brown-tinted reflection of me stared back, distorting as the liquid sloshed and rippled. It was odd—I didn't look at myself often, and sometimes I found it strange to see my own face, thinner and sharper than it had been in my old life, with a more slender nose and a less squinty gaze. It was strange to see my pupils, which had once been obscured by irises so dark they had almost been black. It was strange to see blond hair framing my face.

Somehow, it felt strange to be alive.

"Yoshiya will never see his reflection again," I said quietly, feeling my eyes begin to water. Because really, that's what this conversation had been about, hadn't it? Not about Minato. Not about Itsuki and his losses.

It had been about me and mine.

"He'll never look at his face and think about how it's changed," I whispered, biting my lip when I felt it begin to tremble. "He'll never stare at his own eyes and get to see his pupils change size in light. He'll never fix his hair in a mirror, or comb it, or cut it…"

I suddenly just felt tired. It had been nice to talk about someone else for a bit, however morbid the subject matter had been, but now I was just back to where I had left off—thinking about Yoshiya and crying. I had been crying all day and I still was going at it.

"I just want to stop for a while," I sobbed, putting my tea down on a nearby crate. "But I can't. Every time I think I might be done I just start again."

Itsuki said nothing as I sat there and bawled, gasping and hiccuping and wiping my snot on my sleeve. I found myself hunching up and turning away—I hated crying in front of other people.

"…I'll let your folks know you're staying the night," he finally said when I had stopped hyperventilating long enough listen to him. I knew he doubted it was going to be my last episode—I did too—but I guess he'd figured he'd talk while I was still lucid. "There's a spare room upstairs."

He went away to the back room again, this time emerging not only with a box of tissues but, surprisingly enough, a large bird on his arm. I watched, distantly fascinated, as he quickly scrawled with a brush pen into a scroll before handing it to his falcon. It took it in one talon before beating its wings and soaring out the still-open window.

"Daytime's still a ways off," he said quietly, handing me the tissues as we watched it fly off into the night. "But it'll come faster with company."

* * *

After that, Team 11 entered what was colloquially known as a cripple phase—the stretch of time after a squadmate dies and the team is unable to take missions. It was a phase that usually lasted about two weeks to a month, which was used by the administration to deliberate what to do with the remaining members. The remaining members used it to mourn and often recover themselves—if we had been a regular team and had been assigned on a delivery mission together, it was more than likely that, if we hadn't died, we would've come out injured too.

I usually spent my time hovering around the House and Mikawaya Fruits. I was still prone to randomly tearing up at the sight of previously mundane things, but was mostly past the hysterics phase; now I was more in the train-your-ass-off-and-just-stop-trying-to-think phase. I had roughly gotten Uncle Souhei's chakra flow trick down and was slicing up things ad infinitum; at one point during one of my sessions Auntie Reiko came outside and spent about fifteen minutes just chucking stuff at me, ranging from wads of paper to pieces of wood to actual live kunai to vegetables that needed to be cut for dinner.

The method behind Uncle's approach to chakra flow sounded simple in theory, but was, in reality, actually very tricky to apply. When he talked about "having flexibility in the chakra pathways,"he actually meant "having the ability to stretch your chakra out to painful degrees without actually letting go of you chakra." The principle of it was to apply chakra flow to your own skin without actually dispelling any from your body. You were supposed to coat yourself and make your own current so that when an infused wire touched your skin it would grind against that and not your poor, vulnerable flesh.

(I very, very dimly recalled someone doing something like this with earth-natured chakra, too, but it would be a while before I remembered who it was.)

The reason why you could only learn it as a child was because, as you got older, it became harder to keep your chakra in the almost-out-of-your-body state that using flow on your own skin required. It was still possible, to an extent, but as we learned the farthest an adult could push out the current was to the dermis. Unfortunately, trying to use wind chakra flow there ended in a very, very painful blood blister. Minato, who had been intrigued by the concept, had found that out the hard way: He had originally thought it wouldn't be too different from the concept of water-walking or tree-walking, but as it turned out, expelling chakra so you could use it to cling to surfaces was a very different practice. Uncle Souhei had a given him a very amused I-told-you-so look after that discovery.

(For those of you wondering how using chakra flow on your skin was different from gathering chakra in your feet and using it to stick to things, the difference is this: when tree walking, the chakra in the feet is anchored _throughout_ the feet and whatever kind of footwear you had on, not just on the surface. If it were the same thing as Uncle's trick, you'd be ripping your skin off—or the soles of your shoes, whatever—every time you took a step.)

I made a lot of progress in my solo training. Not just because I had a sort of one-on-one tutorship going on with Uncle now, but because I saw very little of Akihiko and was, therefore, unable to even have team training. He said he was busy completing new Chuunin duties, registering for things and the like, but I knew he just really wanted to be alone a lot. I could respect that, though—we had all been close, but Yoshiya had been Akihiko's best friend before he had been mine. It made sense that he would take it harder than I did.

It did make me feel pretty lonely, though. He was always facing the other way when I looked at him.

"Suzu!" Auntie Reiko called, snapping me out of my daze. I stopped staring into space, got up from my now customary seat on the veranda, and went to the kitchen, where Auntie Reiko was holding a bento wrapped in a blue cloth that I recognized as Minato's.

"Niichan forgot his lunch?" I asked, taking it from her and knowing what my task was without even having to be told. I did this all the time for many of my other cousins, too, after all. "That's kind of unusual for him."

"I think he was intending to just go out and buy today because he left before I got up," Auntie Reiko said with a shrug, wiping her hands on her apron. "Do you mind going over and checking anyway?"

"Sure." I smiled. "It's nice to see him during the day, anyway. Did he say he was going anywhere in particular today?"

"Training Ground 3," she replied.

So… It's been six chapters since this story began and there's a few big questions that have yet to be addressed. I bet you guys have all been wondering. I mean, I can practically hear your voices, and they're going something like this: It's fine and dandy you've settled into your new Narutoverse life, and you've spent marvelous amounts of time developing the characters of all these people we don't actually know, so when are we going to get some actual canon? Are we ever going to meet anyone from Naruto proper besides Minato? Do you even know what you're going to do with your foreknowledge?

Well, friends, now is the time to give these questions answers. Let me respond in reverse order: No, yes, and now.

I arrived at Training Ground 3 after about six or seven minutes of roof-hopping. As usual, the citizens below thought nothing of the assorted mix of men, women, and tweens jumping on the ceilings of their homes. It was a good thing ninjas endeavored to be stealthy and soundless; the sheer amount of traffic these building tops saw would probably drive the residents crazy if they could hear it.

When I got there, though, something was niggling at the edge of my senses. I was not quite a chakra sensor yet—that sort of skill did not come without years of practice—but I had been training long enough now to develop the sort of shinobi-intuition that could tell when others were around. It was nothing more than an unfounded gut feeling, but we had always been taught never to ignore our gut feelings. And sure enough, when I got Minato in my sights, he was not alone: There were three figures slumped on the ground in front of him. I began to feel a vague anxiety.

He waved when he saw me. I knew for a fact that he had felt me coming—unlike me, Minato was a very accomplished sensor—but it was nice of him to act like I had been stealthy enough to avoid his notice til now. I waved back before lifting his bento into the air and pointing at it. He made a summoning motion, curling his fingers downward.

I pursed my lips and began walking forward, feeling strangely bothered.

"Everyone, let me introduce one of my favorite little sisters, Misuzu Namikaze." Minato grinned when I had finally made my way over to him. "Suzu, this my newly-formed team!"

Oh, Lordy. That was why I had been feeling so weird, I thought as I gave a shallow bow to the three very familiar faces looking up at me.

"Nice to meet you all," I lied, for this was most certainly not the first time I had seen this Team 7. "I'm Suzu."

"I'm Obito Uchiha!" Obito immediately jumped up from his place on the ground, where he had previously been gasping for air like a fish out of water. It was kind of impressive how quickly he had been able to gather the air to shout that at me.

"Kakashi Hatake," Kakashi grunted. We exchanged brief nods—we had seen each before, even if we'd never actually formally spoken.

And then, after him…

"I'm Rin Nohara." The girl who started it all smiled a bit breathlessly, summoning the strength to bend at the waist even though she was sprawled on the ground. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

I held in an uncomfortable squirm. She was so… nice-looking. Pretty. Sweet-sounding. I immediately wanted to like her but it felt like I was suddenly being pulled in two directions.

This girl was going to die.

"Auntie didn't know if you had lunch or not," I said as I looked away to my cousin, unable to keep eye contact with her. I held up the bento. "She wanted to know if you were going to need this or not."

Minato scratched his head.

"I was actually going to treat everyone to Ichiraku's," he confessed, looking regretful. Obito immediately perked up at the mention of free food. "But I hate to waste her cooking…"

I shrugged. Well, it seemed like her intuition had been correct; he had been planning to eat out.

"I'll eat it," I offered. "If you don't mind me using your chopsticks."

Minato smiled guiltily at me. Ah, he was such a ramen addict. It figured.

"Want me to treat you?" he asked, apologetic. I snorted.

"Doesn't that defeat the purpose of me offering to eat this?" I asked, holding in a smile. Minato rubbed his neck.

"It does, but… I feel bad," he laughed sheepishly.

"It's fine," I assured him. "Well… I'd best leave you to team stuff now, yeah?" I couldn't help but grimace then.

"Suzu…" Minato immediately began, looking concerned. He must be thinking I was having another Yoshiya episode, I quickly deduced. Well… I'd take any excuse he'd give. All the more reason for me to run.

"Excuse me," I mumbled to my cousin's students, bowing again and not looking anyone in the eye. I was off before they could respond, shoulders feeling heavy.

They were going to splinter soon. All but one of them was going end up dead… unless I decided to do something about it.

I kept running.

* * *

**A/N: So I really, really should be annotating my AP Lit homework, but I'm writing fanfiction instead. It's not a good idea… and it's probably not gonna last. I've basically just wasted my last free week. Now I have to go to camps and stuff.**

**See you all soon… maybe.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	8. Age 11: A Single Day

**Published: 8/8/2014**

**Edited: 10/13/2015 because I'm _still_ tweaking the fight.**

* * *

**Age 11: Part 1**

"_Wow, brat, what the hell? You broke her nose!"_

"_Jiraiya-sama, please, don't give him trouble. It doesn't matter anymore—"_

"_I dunno, kid, seems like it matters to him. He can hardly look you in the face right now."_

"_I don't mind! I don't, honest."_

"…_Really, Suzu?"_

"…_Well, okay, maybe I _am _still a bit upset. But to be fair, you _did _break my nose…"_

"_See! What the hell were you thinking, aiming for the face? If she's still mad now, think about how bad things would have been if it had come out crooked! Women are very touchy about their appearance, you know!"_

"…_I knew I should have skipped this session…" _

* * *

"Tanaka, are you in position?" I whispered into my mic, stringing wire around my fingers as I carefully peered around the boulder that was serving as my hiding place. At the end of the road, I could faintly see a group of four approaching, two at the front, one in the middle, and one in the back.

"_Yeah," _came the slightly distorted reply. "_Do you really think we can get to sensei like this?"_

"She'll be expecting something, so if Yuuki can get to her we should be fine," I murmured. "But you _have _to make sure to resurface in the right spot. It's essential."

"_Yeah, I know, I know,"_ Yuuki grumbled agitatedly. "_She can do Hiding Like a Mole way longer than I can. But I_ still _don't think this cliffside is stable enough for you to use explosives—"_

"And I'm _still _telling you I'm not using bombs," I hissed back irately. "It's a technique with a wide range, that's all. It's just I can't control the back precisely and I don'twant to accidentally get you caught in it."

"_Are you sure you should be using stuff you can't control in the field?"_ Tanaka fretted. "_We're still just genin—"_

"It will be _fine _as long as we just do everything according to plan." I sighed. "Look, I've been a genin for two years now, so just trust me, okay? I promise we'll get your sensei back if we can just pull this off. Now everyone, get ready…"

The radio channel fell silent as we all tensed in anticipation, preparing ourselves for our roles. Yuuki was going to use the Hiding Like a Mole Technique to grab his teacher while I jumped out and served as a distraction. Tanaka was going to keep an eye out for reinforcements; we were in enemy territory right now, after all, so we really needed to avoid alerting anyone else to our presence.

"Go!" I yelled as I dove out onto the road, dragging a cloud of steel string behind me, letting it billow out dramatically before lighting it up with chakra. I doubted intimidation tactics would work on these guys, especially coming from a vertically-challenged eleven-year-old like myself, but it couldn't hurt to try.

"_Namikaze_?" Sonohara Airi, Elite Jounin of the Leaf, exclaimed incredulously. She looked shocked to see me in a full frontal assault. Not that I wouldn't be, either, if I were her; even if I was supposedly a nintaijutsu-style fighter, I was a total lightweight. My power did not come from my constitution at all. I was more like the physical equivalent of a squishy wizard—which was _also _very bad, seeing as not even the dumbest of gaming novices put their squishy wizards in front. But it was my responsibility as senior field member to keep the rookies out of danger, so to the front I would go, squishy or not.

(I know what you're thinking: Why they hell would you opt for taijutsu if you know you can't tank? Answer: I'm trying to aim for an AGI build, so stop judging.

…Yes, I speak gamer in my head. Shut up, it helps me when I'm strategizing.)

The Iwa ninja surrounding her leapt into action, predictably unaffected by my attempt to puff up my feathers. I quickly signed _below _in Konoha Standard sign language before launching into a long series of very gymnastic evasive maneuvers, letting my wire spread out as much as possible. The enemy ninja paid it no heed, looking pleased to see me on the defensive. I spent a few more seconds ducking and jumping, letting them think I was barely keeping up, before launching my attack.

"Fuuton: Daitoppa!" I exclaimed, thrusting both arms out in opposite directions. The ensuing wind blasts were rather weak for Great Breakthroughs—that was what happened when a tiny person like me split her chakra for two jutsu at once—but the point of it was more to direct the wire than anything, so they served their purpose.

My wires whipped about in the gusts, slicing through the Iwa ninjas' armor and tearing at their skin. One of them fell over after taking a faceful of it, having been positioned right in the middle of the wind blasts. Unfortunately for me, though, that pissed off the two remaining Stone shinobi—who were now bleeding but not incapacitated—quite a bit.

I was suddenly evading again, though this time I had to fight off the drain of what was a very chakra-intensive attack. This was why I was just kind of a sucky ninja in general, I thought exasperatedly as I wildly bent away from a kick that would have most certainly taken off my head. I had a tiny frame, so I lacked in strength; I had tiny reserves, so I lacked in stamina.

But it was dodge or die, so dodge I would. I was forced to continue with my crazy acrobatics until I was gasping for breath, arms and legs burning; I felt a huge surge of relief when a pair of hands shot out of the dirt and seized both Iwa ninja by the ankles. They let out synchronized yells as they were dragged down into the earth, all the way up to their necks. I wasted no time in delivering knock-out blows to back of their heads.

"That was well done, Namikaze," Sonohara-sensei said as she pulled herself out of the ground a moment later, emerging a few feet away from me. I cut the chakra flow and re-rolled the wire around my wrists before bracing my hands on my knees and panting like a dog. Yuuki and Tanaka appeared, the former coming out from behind a boulder and the later dropping down from his perch on the cliff.

"I think you might have permanently disfigured this one," the jounin murmured, bending over the twitching ninja who had taken a face-full of steel. "…I don't think he's dead, but he's probably going to be blind."

I looked to his blood-smeared face and grimaced. Well, that was far from pleasant, but at least he was alive, right? Right…

"That technique looks like it has potential," she said off-handedly, sounding… not quite impressed, really, but maybe a bit approving. "Do a bit of taming you might get somewhere with it."

"It would have been cooler if you didn't have to flail around to get it to work," Yuuki informed as he crossed his arms, sounding far less appreciative.

"It's a work in progress," I defended, frowning at him. Still, It _was _true… I needed a way to control the wires without wasting so much movement.

That was it for the post-battle discussion, though, because we all spontaneously remembered we were in enemy territory and promptly set to fleeing. Our original assignment—which had been again to deliver supplies (did these missions _ever _go smoothly?)—had ended in disaster when some passing Iwa ninja had spotted Sonohara-sensei and ambushed us to grab her. That was the trend lately—capturing enemy jounin and using them to bargain, usually for your own POWs. Iwa knew we were running short on soldiers and every single jounin, even if they had genin limpets attached, was extremely valuable to both sides.

After we had retreated behind friendly lines we took a moment to deliberate whether to set up camp, but Sonohara-sensei decided that the day was still young enough for us to make it back to Konoha before dark. It was a bit of a hard run for her students, who were only a month and a half out of the Academy, but we were mostly okay; we made it back around sunset. After that we went to the Missions Office to report, where we were debriefed and told to get our reports in by the end of the week.

I was unexpected at home; my return date was supposed to have been a full week from now. Auntie Reiko, though, just threw in an extra portion's ingredients to her cooking and we had dinner as usual. I regaled the table with a brief recounting of my heroics, ate my dinner and turned in early; I was thoroughly exhausted.

The next day I had just planned to stay at home—Akihiko was out of the village running his own mission—but then, unexpectedly, I had a visitor.

"Sonohara-sensei?" I said after being summoned to the door, surprised to see the brunette woman standing there.

"Here," she said, shoving a scroll at me. "I'm nominating you for a wartime promotion."

I blinked.

"…Pardon?" I asked dumbly. Sonohara-sensei frowned at me.

"I'm nominating you," she repeated. "For chuunin. I talked with couple other jounin and they've mentioned you. This should be your fourth nomination, so go take it to the Tower and take your proficiency test. That's my letter of rec." She pointed at the scroll. "That's all. Bye."

She sunshin'd away, leaving me standing in the doorway alone. I blinked, utterly shocked. …What just happened? Did she just say… _chuunin_? I looked down at the scroll in my hands.

Had I just earned a promotion?

* * *

"Ooh, looking good," Chiharu grinned at me when I came down wearing a flak jacket the next day. "Except… are you _still _wearing your horrible old vest?"

"It is _not _horrible." I immediately leapt to the defense of my customary eye-high zipper vest. "The hood's detachable, so why can't I wear it under my chuunin vest? Besides, you hardly ever see me use the collar at home. I just keep it folded. What's wrong with that?"

"It's tacky," she complained, taking me by the shoulders and steering me into the living room, where Jinta and Tenrou were, oddly enough, playing jacks. Did they have jacks in this universe? Apparently they did…

"Jin, don't you think Suzu should just get rid of that ratty old vest she's always wearing?" Chiharu demanded as the two boys took turns tossing the ball into the air and snatching up the little metal jacks as fast as they could. It was sort of fascinating watching ninja children play—their hands darted back and forth so fast they blurred. It was one thing to know most kids at this age could move like that, but it was another to see it in action, especially in something so mundane as a game of knucklebones…

"Hnngh," Jinta grunted in response, attention fixed on the task before him. His fingers flashed forward, deftly picking out six of the metal spikes.

"No one cares, Chippon," Tenrou said distractedly as he tried to match Jinta's grab. "If she wants to wear it, let her."

"Minato-nii, listen to these guys," Chiharu whined to Minato, who was sitting on a cushion in front of the coffee table, drawing a brush across a scroll. It was a familiar sight; that was his customary place to practice fuuinjutsu now that he was out of a room here.

"Niichan, you're here?" I asked, surprised. Though it wasn't unusual to have him here visiting in the morning, by this time he should have been with his team doing training or running a mission or something of the like.

"Hm?" He blinked and looked up from his work. "Oh, we're having a break day, no worries. By the way, Suzu, good timing! Come here, I was just working on something I wanted to show you…"

Something he wanted to show me, as in me in particular? Curious, I shrugged out of Chiharu's grasp and went to sit next to him. Minato shifted his scrolls about until three seals were spread out before us.

"You mentioned a while ago your wire jutsu was inefficient because of the amount of maneuvering you had to do to get things in place," he began. "But then I thought, isn't that something you can fix with a couple of propulsion matrices?"

"Propulsion matrices?" I repeated blankly. Minato scratched his head.

"Err, you know how there are bukijutsu users who use scrolls to summon knives and such?" he asked. "When they summon them, they just hold out their scrolls and the kunai come flying out…"

Didn't Tenten have a lot of moves where she would toss scrolls in the air and a hail of metal would come raining? I frowned. Yeah, now that I thought about it, how did that happen? If you sealed a kunai in a regular storage scroll, wouldn't it just fall out limply when you re-summoned it instead of rocketing at opponents like you'd thrown them?

"In sealing, propulsion matrices are responsible for putting those knives in motion," Minato answered my puzzled train of thought. "So I was just wondering why you didn't make use of them as well. You could use it to launch wires without having to run around."

"But I couldn't do that unless I sealed my wires in scrolls," I pointed out. "And I can't do that because I need skin contact to put in the chakra flow. That negates the utility of the technique, doesn't it?"

"Ah," Minato said with a smile, "but I thought of that too. I knew a standard storage-propulsion seal wouldn't serve for your purposes, so I made these instead." He gestured to the blobs of ink on the table.

"How are these different?" I asked, peering at them curiously. Several black lines curved and twisted in each of them, forming some sort of strange pattern that I couldn't really decipher. The only thing I could understand on them were the kanji that were drawn in the center of each circle—the first one looked rather similar to a regular storage scroll because it had "contain" written in the middle, but the others were less familiar; "burst" and "anchor," they read.

"They make use of a space-time ninjutsu teleportation," Minato replied, pointing at the one I had just noted. "See, all of these seals are physically linked with an autonomously differentiating base line; that keeps the Serizawa factor low enough to keep the bond from fragmenting—"

"Niichan…" I said, giving him my best dead-eyed stare. Minato laughed sheepishly.

"Why don't I just show you?" he asked, picking up his scrolls and motioning me to follow him out into the yard. When we had positioned ourselves near the training posts, he produced a coil of wire out of nowhere.

"Alright, so I was thinking you'll want to do something like this," he said as he held up the storage scroll and the wire. "This would be the master storage scroll where you put in all of your wire." Here he took the coil and pressed it to the surface of the seal; it sunk in with a puff of smoke. Minato rolled it up and pocketed it.

"Then you'll apply the other two," he continued, holding up his other two creations. "You see, this seal marked burst will draw wire from the master storage scroll and force it outwards the same way regular propulsion seals do. Then the anchor seal, which is linked to _this _seal, will take the bases of each of those wires and establish a physical link to the space it's activated in. If you're touching this seal, you'll be able to apply chakra flow to the wires after you activate them."

And then Minato did something amazing. He took the seal marked burst and pressed it against one of the training logs; a mass of wire burst out and wrapped itself around it. Then he took a couple of paces back toward me and pressed a hand onto the anchor seal; wire materialized around his fingers as a length of steel threads materialized between his hand and the post. He pulsed his chakra through it and then pulled his arm back; the log fell apart in pieces.

"That is so impossible," I said flatly. "How the hell does that even happen? That's… I call hacks."

"…Hacks?" Minato asked, puzzled. I resisted the urged to slap a hand to my forehead; I _had _to stop thinking aloud. It was going to get myself killed one of these days…

"How does that _work_?" I asked instead of elaborating, pointing to the sliced-up post. "That's _impossible_."

Minato laughed, unperturbed by my strangeness—it wasn't the first time he'd heard me babbling perceived nonsense.

"No, it's just fuuinjutsu," he contradicted with a small smile. "Just because you can't see the mechanics of something doesn't make it impossible."

…It was official: sealing was _magic_. Sometimes I wondered why I was even surprised anymore. Naruto ninjas pulled magical crap out of their asses all the time, after all. I should have _expected _something like this, really. If you could use fuuinjutsu to stuff a giant nine-tailed fox demon into a baby's stomach, why couldn't you have physics-defying wire strings?

"I could draw up you a stack of these seals if you'd like, but it might be better if we just inked the anchor on your wrist," he said, motioning to his forearm. "That way all you have to do is learn how to touch-apply the other seal. It's more permanent, but I think you might appreciate it if you're fighting and you happen to run out of paper seals…"

"Touch-apply?" I asked, startled. I didn't think anyone short of a Sealing Master could use touch-applied fuuinjutsu. Could a sealing-illiterate dimwit like me learn how to do something so complex?

"Sure, it's easy if you know the seal well enough," Minato replied with a casual nod. "It won't be any different from learning how to do a new ninjutsu technique, and you've done that before. In fact, people do it all the time. Haven't you seen people summon nin-animals to fight before? That's touch sealing too, you know."

"But I thought the writing just appeared after you make the hand seals," I said, bewildered. "That's not touch sealing."

Minato laughed.

"Suzu, the writings that appear on the ground are just the written forms of the seals you make with your hands," he informed with a very amused smile. "That's why people can also just put blood on a scroll to call their summons—the hand seals that they would have to make are already written out for them."

…_What? _How did that… actually, that made sense. How did I not know that? But then wait a second, why did…

"But then why do you need to make the hand seals at all?" I asked, feeling my eyebrows scrunch together the way they did whenever I encountered ridiculously complicated problems. It was like learning calculus all over again.

"It helps define the chakra when you put it down," Minato said with a shrug. "People do it for accuracy's sake. It's not necessary, though. Watch…"

He put his hand down on the grass without making any hand seals at all; black ink slithered out beneath it. There was a puff of smoke and then suddenly a tiny orange toad appeared, small enough to fit in his palm.

"I'm Gamamaru," the toad announced in a comically squeaky voice, turning to its summoner with what looked to be the toad equivalent of a smile. "Did you need someone to play with?"

…Oh, what the _hell_.

"No, not at the moment." Minato just smiled. "Sorry to call you all the way out here."

The toad shrugged—did toads shrug?—and disappeared in another puff of smoke. I turned to my cousin and stared.

You would think I'd be used to this by now. Really, you would.

"So… want to get started?" Minato queried. "I bet I can get you to do it by the end of the day."

* * *

I bet you guys have all heard the platitude that communication is key when maintaining healthy relationships. I don't know what you guys might think, but I wholeheartedly endorse this statement; God knows it would have saved me—and Akihiko, for that matter—a _lot _of heartache. If we had just spoken to each other properly, I think, we wouldn't have ended up losing so much time together. But we didn't. We never talked—really _talked_—and when the day came for us to break, we broke.

Using that as a segue, I just want to let you all know that I had a number "worst days" in my life. Among them was the day my arm got crushed and the day Yoshiya died. I had a few after that, too, a couple of years after I had become a jounin… and let me tell you, they had been _bad _days. But before those days, there had been this one: the day Akihiko punched me through a tree.

Like most of my "worst days," this one started normally. Well, mostly normally, because after Akihiko returned from leading a week-long border patrol, he visited the House in the very early morning. _Very _early. Like, the unholy hour of _four in the morning_ early.

"What the heck do you need to tell me at this time of day?" I grumbled irately, holding down a yawn as I shuffled outside in my sleeping clothes. It was kind of embarrassing to be standing outside in nothing but a baggy white t-shirt and shorts, but it was still too dark to even freaking see down the street, so I didn't care.

"I'm withdrawing from the General Forces," was Akihiko's blunt reply.

It took me a moment to process that. I blinked. Then I blinked again, and again, and again—

"_What_?" I asked, aghast. _What _had he just said?

"I'm withdrawing from the General Forces," he repeated, a frown on his face.

In that moment, the gradual change that had been occurring over the course of two years completed itself before my eyes. In hindsight he had been frowning long before that moment, but only right then did the significance of his downturned lips seem to truly strike me.

Akihiko was _frowning._

"Why?" I demanded, both for this sudden change and for his statement. _Why _was he frowning? _Why _was he withdrawing?

What the hell was going on?

"I've applied for a position in ANBU," he replied, looking at me with eyes that betrayed nothing. I felt an abrupt, convulsing fear. When had they become like that? Why couldn't I read them? I had _always _been able to read them. Ever since the day we'd met I had always been able to tell exactly what he was thinking.

"You can't do that," I immediately contradicted, clenching my fists tightly as I felt my heartbeat begin to pick up. "You only become an ANBU when the Hokage asks you to."

A flash of anger darted across Akihiko's face. The pounding in my chest doubled at the sight of it.

He had never looked at me like that before.

"You're _always _like this," he muttered in the tone that was always precursor to an explosion. He looked away, glowering at the ground. "_You can't _this, _you can't _that. Do you think I'm an idiot or something? Am I really that stupid to you?"

"What?" I gaped. "I—Where did _that _come from? I've never called you stupid before."

"But you've always acted like I am," he snapped, looking back up and glaring. "When we were at the Academy you were always talking down to me, and when I became a chuunin, you didn't believe it either. I'm tired of it. Why should I have to take that from someone like _you?_"

"Someone like me?" I repeated, not liking the delivery of that line. "…What's that supposed to mean? All I said was that you can't apply for ANBU. I'm not talking down to you."

"Yes, you are!" Akihiko contradicted with a vehement scowl. "You don't think I know ANBU are hand-picked by the Hokage? Of course I do! _You're _the one who doesn't know that you can train to be one when their numbers are diminished during wartime!"

I felt my eyebrows needle together; wartime again? _Everything _seemed to be permitted in wartime. I mean, I knew things like ages didn't matter to ninja, but Akihiko was _eleven_. Surely we weren't so desperate as to need little boys to become elite assassins.

"But why do you want to?" I asked, utterly confounded. "You're only a chuunin. You don't need to—"

"What I need," Akihiko interrupted angrily, "is to get away from _you_!"

There was a moment of total silence. His words almost seemed to ring in the air. Then he took a breath; I took a step back.

"You're a total ditz!" he shouted, shoving an accusing finger at my chest. "You're always getting in trouble and rescued by someone else! You screw up and have training accidents all the time! You can't take care of yourself, you're not _strong_, and you're nowhere _near _as smart as Yoshiya was!"

"I-I—" I stuttered, shrinking back from the explosion of pure hate being thrown at me. "What are—what are you—?"

"I'm saying that you're the most pathetic excuse for a ninja I've ever seen," Akihiko declared, crossing his arms and fixing me with a look so icy it could freeze fire. "And _that's _what I mean when I say someone like you_._ Someone who runs crying to some stupid fruit peddler every time something bad happens."

The sudden mention of Itsuki had me blinking in bemusement. Then his words registered with me, and a flash of indignation shot through me.

"Hey," I said sharply. "If you're angry at me, that's one thing, but don't talk about Itsuki like that. You don't know what his circumstances are."

Akihiko was right back in my space, slamming his shoulder against mine and shoving his nose in my face.

"So what?" he hissed. "I don't _need _to know them. All I know is that you're trying to replace Yoshiya with some washed-up ninja failure—"

Now, I am not a particularly rage-driven person. Oh, sure, I could get angry and I could hold grudges, but my anger was not the flashy kind—it was more passive-aggressive. And honestly, I should have taken it in stride—it was obvious Akihiko was employing the logic of grief rather than reason, if his unsupported accusations and continued non-sequitur mentionings of our dead teammate were anything to go by, and anything he said really shouldn't have meant anything to me. But to hear him say I was trying _replace _Yoshiya?

I shoved him away from me. "What did you just say?" I asked lowly, balling my fists together. Akihiko sneered and repeated himself, and then there was a stormy silence.

We hadn't gotten into a proper fistfight since we had been in the Academy, but then, at some unspoken signal, we dove at each other in tandem, fully intent on beating the shit out of one another. I knew in my head that there was no way I could take on Akihiko in a no-holds-barred taijutsu match, but I was too angry to care; I just wanted to grind his face into the ground and make him eat dirt. How could he even imply I didn't cherish Yoshiya's memory with every single scrap of my being? That I didn't care_? _That I would try and _replace _him_?_

We traded blows for a solid three minutes—I even got two kicks and a punch in—but Akihiko was bigger, stronger, faster, and all around just better than me. In no time at all I found myself being shoved up against the trunk of the old cherry tree that stood across the road from around the House. I glared furiously at him.

"If I had had the choice," Akihiko snarled, "I would have chosen him over you. I'd rather have _him _here now than _you_."

Paradoxically, you hurt less and more when you're angry. If I had been level-headed, the cruelty of those words would have had me in tears; as it was, the only thing I did then was spit in his face.

And then came the worst moment of this worst day: he punched me in the face. Through the tree. With chakra. It was not a sparring punch; it was not even just an angry punch. It was an _I want to kill you_ punch.

Wood exploded behind me; the air rushed right out of my lungs and stars erupted across my vision. I fell into a sprawling, gasping heap over a carpet of jagged splinters, one hand coming up to clutch my face as blood began leaking from my nose.

"I _hate _you," Akihiko spat back.

* * *

**A/N: Yes, I am a giant drama whore. But if you weren't expecting a whole ton of drama, well… it _is _kind of the only genre listed on this story.**

**Anyway, I just learned that you don't capitalize the ninja ranks (chuunin, jounin ect.) so whoops. Not gonna do that anymore. Also, I dunno what storage scrolls actually look like. I just assumed they have a big kanji splat in the the middle like exploding notes. Or the thing that Jiraiya made to seal Itachi's Amaterasu, which had "fire" on it.**

**Also WHY AM I NOT DOING MY HOMEWORK. Argh.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	9. Age 11: Bells: Part 1

**Published: 8/23/2014**

* * *

**Age 11: Part 2**

_"You know, I always wondered why I never gave Kakashi-kun a good thrashing."_

_"Reiko, he was a jounin at the same age you failed your second Chuunin Exam. I don't think you'd have gotten too far with that."_

_"Is that a challenge, dear? You should know best of all that I can beat the ass of anyone who messes with my babies."_

_"I think I sense a story behind that sentence, ojisan."_

_"...You know, Misuzu, you really shouldn't try to stick your nose where it doesn't belong."_

* * *

When this story reaches its completion, the me you see will be well into her twenties. A lot of things have happened to that girl over the course of two decades, and I can say with absolute certainty that she has screwed up. There have been countless ill-made decisions. So many mistakes, a myriad of moments when I can only look back and ask myself what the hell she had been thinking… but if you asked me right now, after years of living and fighting and succeeding and failing, what her greatest mistake was, I would tell you it was this: Letting Team Minato go to Kannabi Bridge unprepared.

It has always been, and always will be, I think, my greatest act—or non-act, I suppose—of cowardice. Never has there been a time before or after that could match it. It was not a moment of pride for me. Even if it would have ended badly for me I know I should have told Minato long ago what I knew—if not for the sake of his own health and safety, then for the sake of all of Konoha. But unfortunately, that lesson was one I would not learn for a long while yet. It was only after I had grown up and was leading my own teams on my own missions that I truly understood that there are times where you must act, even when it is to your own detriment. When the entirety of the village is depending you, there is no room for _you_.

It's a heavy burden to bear, the safety and happiness of countless others; it's the burden that all Leaf shinobi carry, and I've not always borne it well. It was my responsibility as a Konoha ninja to do something, but I didn't. I was too self-absorbed.

It's probably one of my biggest regrets in life.

It was more than just the death of a comrade. It was more than just knowing I had murdered through negligence—because even if Obito was still alive, _Obito_ was dead—and it was more than just knowing Minato was suffering through one of the worst tragedies in his shinobi career. Those traumas, though painful, I could have dealt with. No… it was the knowledge that he had come home to take comfort in my presence—me, the girl who was part of the reason Obito was gone in the first place—that hurt the most. I don't mean that in an egotistical way, because it wasn't like he had come to the House just for me—there is a lot of comfort to be found just in being in a place associated with safety and love—but it was true: After his student at died en route to Kannabi Bridge, Minato came to the House and chose to sit next to me to do his mourning. Not Auntie Reiko, not Uncle Souhei, not any of the House kids closer to his age.

Me.

He was fond of me. He thought I was his cute baby cousin. He thought I was just a little girl, and he felt obliged to look after me, always watching over me in the spirit of the benevolent big brother. In his eyes, I was just an innocent eleven-year-old chuunin, not a gutless grown woman hiding behind a stolen face.

(That's probably the reason why I had been so scared to tell him: He'd _know_. He'd know that I was a fake, that I wasn't truly his family, and then I wouldn't get to be doted-upon Suzu-chan anymore. I'd be a stranger, and I'd lose my niichan.)

The guilt of it would have been enough to crush the Greek Titan Atlas, that's how heavy it was. On my shoulders, in my mind, it outweighed the _world_. I think I must've cried for hours after he returned, because every time I looked up and saw the shadow that had crept into his eyes, I died a little bit inside knowing that I had helped put it there. And what was worse was that _he_ tried to comfort _me_ after finding out about Akihiko's cataclysmic departure, mistaking that for the cause of my periodic sobbing fits. Naturally, I cried even harder every time he attempted it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again—I have done _nothing_ to deserve the love and loyalty of a man like Minato Namikaze.

I think the universe knew that, too, because it felt the need to rub in how badly I screwed up. That or some higher being with a sick sense of humor was intent on screwing with my life. Why did I think that? Because after Team 7 finished its cripple phase, I received my reassignment. My partner—and Akihiko and I _had_ been a registered unit, even if we had often split to be on different missions—was gone now, after all, making me a cripple myself. And what better way was there to fix the issue of two incomplete teams than to stick them together?

Three guesses as to who my new commanding officer was. First two don't count.

I cannot even begin to _describe_ the level of scummy I felt after I was designated Obito's replacement. It was almost like I had been gunning for this spot or something and I killed him off for my own betterment. Of course, with that said, such a thing had never been my intention, but the phrase _terrible excuse for a human being _was still always on my mind regardless. Even if I hadn't purposely orchestrated it, he was still gone because of my inability to act, so the principle of it was the same: Obito was dead because of my selfishness.

The morning of my reassignment was one filled with crushing trepidation. The very thought of standing before the assembled faces of my cousin's team made my heart sink into the earth, and it took every scrap of my happiness with it when it settled in its well-deep grave. The world itself had taken on a slightly gray tint, and somehow I got the feeling that if I did anything to disturb this newfound gloom, some undefined horror would fall upon me. Consequently, when I emerged after dressing for the day, I did so in black: black shirt, black skirt, black over-the-knee socks, black sandals; the only color I ended up having on me was the subdued green of my flak jacket. Even my customary ponytail seemed intolerably bouncy, so I just ended up pulling my hair over one shoulder and fixing it there with a band. I didn't wear my ninja-zipper-collar vest.

It was like putting on funeral clothes all over again. In a way, it _was_ a funeral, because the final moments of the final remnant of Team 11 were fast approaching. Soon my genin team would permanently become a thing of memory—no more Yoshiya, no more Akihiko, and no more friends.

_That_ was a depressing thought. I'd only ever bothered to cultivate proper peer-to-peer relationships with those two, so beyond my family members, I really didn't have any more friends. I guess I'd never expected them to die... Well, to die and to punch me through a tree before cutting off all relations, specifically. But that was as good as dead, really, so it was only a technicality.

If I bothered to make an Earth metaphor, it would go something like this: Losing your team was a lot like the feeling of playing a sequel in a video game series. The first game had been great, with an amazing cast and a tear-jerking, heart-rending plot, but then it ends. You play the second to try and fill the void left behind, and while it's got its own wonderful people and a new mission in a different-but-familiar background, your heart still bleeds for the originals you had attached yourself to. You're always longing for the old times. You're always missing the old quest. You're always looking for _them_, remembering the things they did, drawing parallels in everything, seeing them and the things they did everywhere but never actually meeting them again…

I kept my gaze turned away when I met Minato out on the porch, clenching my fists and fixing my eyes on the best possible distraction: the splintered stump of an old cherry tree across the street. Its bark was splintered and jagged and, frankly, ugly as hell, but I had insisted they leave it there. I don't know why, but I wanted it—no, _needed_ it—to stay exactly where it was. Its presence accomplished nothing, but it brought comfort to me all the same.

"Ready to go?" Minato asked with false cheer, making no note of my inability to look him in the face. I just mumbled an affirmative, jerking my head away from the tree-remains and staring at my feet instead.

We made our way to the training ground in silence. I could tell he was worried—I didn't think I'd said a word in actual conversation with him since he'd returned—but I didn't do anything about it. I _couldn't_ do anything about it. Any pitiful facade I tried to muster would be so pathetically obvious that it wasn't even worth trying.

Training Ground 3 came into view. The Memorial Stone glinted in the distance, Konoha's flag flying high beside it. I quickly averted my eyes and looked instead to the trio of training posts stuck in the ground a few ways away, where two figures were standing. Both of them immediately straightened when we approached.

"Sensei," Kakashi said, gaze only briefly flicking to me before focusing on his teacher questioningly. His hitai-ate was slanted over his left eye; I felt my insides go icy at the sight of it.

"Good morning, sensei," Rin greeted, smiling a small smile, but its effect was tainted by the quiet sorrow coloring her voice. "And Suzu-chan, right?" She looked to me.

"Yeah," I murmured guiltily, staring determinedly at the spot right next to her head and feeling slightly disappointed that she'd remembered me. If she'd forgotten, I wouldn't have had to feel that much more guilt over her wasted conscientiousness. "...Hi."

"Did you get promoted since we last saw you?" she queried at the sight of my chuunin vest, unaffected by my lack of social grace. "Congratulations!"

I smiled weakly. _Yes_, whatever deity above, I hear your message loud and clear: Rin is the sweetest kunoichi. Please stop trying drown me in my own remorse.

"Is she here to observe team training?" Kakashi wanted to know, looking significantly less enthused by my presence. Minato rubbed his neck.

"Actually," he began cautiously, "she's just recently been assigned a new team…"

Kakashi had whipped his head around to stare at me before Minato even finished his sentence. The air cooled about about ten degrees; I bit my lip and immediately began shuffling behind my cousin.

A moment of awkward silence.

"...Yoroshiku," I said quietly, fisting my hands in my skirt. It was the standard thing to say for a the beginning of a team: _Let's get along. Please be kind to me. I look forward to your guidance._ Of course, I had no right to request any of those things, and if Kakashi's icy glare was any indication of future relations, I certainly wouldn't be getting any of it.

"Yoroshiku, Suzu-chan," Rin tried to break the tension, smiling her tiny smile. Oh, this girl tried so hard...

"Why don't we do introductions?" Minato suggested quickly, sending Kakashi a worried glance. "I know you've met before, but since we're working together now, we should all know each other better, don't you think?"

"...I'm Misuzu Namikaze," I said when he looked at me. "But I usually go by Suzu. Um... I like training, I guess. And my family. I don't like… uh, I don't know," I wrinkled my nose, "supply delivery missions? My hobby is, um, training again, probably. And my dream…" I paused. Did I have a dream? Lately I hadn't been thinking much of the future. I considered it for a moment. "...I want to live a fulfilling life, I guess."

Wow, that was smooth. Minato stared at me with that concerned look he'd been giving me for a while now. I shrugged helplessly.

"I'm Rin Nohara," Rin began, coming to my rescue. "I like training as well! It's my favorite thing to do along with practicing iryou ninjutsu, which is also my biggest hobby. As for dislikes, I think it's awful when people are suffering. That's why my dream is to be a good medic and a strong kunoichi of Konoha that can protect the village."

...Jesus Christ, she's so goddamn _nice_. Is it even _possible_ for ninjas to be that nice?

"Kakashi," Minato prompted when Kakashi continued to stare at me like I'd kicked his puppy and laughed about it in his face. Kakashi scowled—and you could tell he was scowling, his mask was creasing heavily—and crossed his arms.

"I'm Kakashi Hatake," he said flatly. He said nothing else.

"...Do you like training, too?" I tried hesitantly, getting the distinct feeling that I would probably regret it.

"That's none of your business."

...Yeah, I think I'll just keep my mouth shut from now on.

* * *

The next couple of weeks were spent confined to the village. I think Minato really must have taken my comment on supply missions to heart; we managed to avoid having a single delivery assignment the whole time. The fact that he was trying so hard to cheer me up left me in a state of constant self-loathing; colorless clothes and perkless side-pontytails were quickly becoming my regular look.

Team interactions were mixed. Rin and I actually got along together pretty well, but then again, that wasn't unexpected—she was so incredibly good-natured that I would have to expend conscious effort to _not_ get along with her. The reverse was true of Kakashi, though: All I had to do to piss him off was breathe. He hated my guts. At first he'd mostly just ignored me, but after a week or two he loosened up, and soon his ruthless snarking had my neck fixed in a permanent downward bend. The fact that I was nearly two years younger than him and Rin—and therefore two years behind in skill—didn't really help.

(I used to think I was good at taijutsu. Really, I did. I'd been able to hold my own against the best taijutsu specialist of my graduating class, after all. But facing Akihiko, I soon learned, was _nothing_ like facing Kakashi.)

As for Minato... the only word to describe the situation was _awkward_. We could hardly stand in the same room without killing the mood of everyone within a ten foot radius. I could tell that he was at wit's end trying to figure out what in the world was going wrong between us, but unfortunately, he was fighting a losing battle. No amount of effort on his part could stop my guilt trips.

Still, my total lack of friends pushed me to try and pursue deeper friendship where I could. Even though I felt like an asshole for trying to worm my way into her life, I often found myself hanging after team missions and training to talk to Rin, who was more than happy to let me follow her all over the village as she went about doing various tasks. Going out to the forest to pick herbs and other medicinal plants together became our prime pastime; it was a good way to spend productive time together while still talking.

One day, after a typical afternoon of patrolling and other similarly dull missions, we found ourselves out in the bush together once more, hunting for milk thistles. At first our conversation was the regular fare—so-and-so did this at the hospital, this-or-that-cousin got in trouble at the House, that sort—but then, out of the blue, she said, "Kakashi isn't a bad person, you know."

I blinked and stopped halfway through putting a handful of purple-tipped stems into the basket on my arm, a bit taken aback by the nonlinear turn in our dialogue.

"Er..."

"He's upset that our old teammate was replaced," Rin said, coming over and kneeling in the grass next to me, brow furrowed but expression earnest. "He's just taking out his frustration you. It's not your fault."

A snort escaped me before I could stop it. Oh, if only she knew.

"I'm serious!" Rin frowned. "Please don't think badly of him. I know it's hard because he's always so nasty with you, but…"

"No, I believe you," I assured her, cutting another green stem from the patch before us. And I did. Even if it was jarring to see him as an angry, rude, antisocial teenager, in my heart I still carried the image of a Kakashi who read smutty novels and cared fiercely for his comrades. He was still only thirteen or so; there was still so much time for him to change. I could hardly fault him for it anyway—I was no saint. And beside that, it seemed like this was the trend lately. People taking out frustration and grief on me, that is.

"It is?" Rin asked, sounding concerned. I froze for a moment before internally smacking myself. God, I've been working on this issue for years and I still can't stop thinking aloud. What the hell was wrong with me?

"I kind of don't want to talk about it," I told her apologetically, cringing at just the thought of it. "Just… let me say that I know people can turn all kinds of awful when their friends die. But it's not their fault, at least not completely."

For a while I had wondered if I hated Akihiko. No matter how badly he had taken Yoshiya's death, he had had no right to blow up at me like that. Maybe I had exacerbated things by getting angry and yelling back, but if he was going to let his grief get the better of him, why couldn't I? If I had been doing something that upset him, he should have told me. You would think that after more than half a decade of friendship he'd say what he wanted to say. But he hadn't, and now the only thing we would ever remember about each other was the way we'd fought and spat in each others' faces.

Was I hurt? Of course. Was I angry? Hell yes. But did I hate him? Could I completely discard our bond and despise him utterly?

No, never. Akihiko had been my first friend in this universe. I'd had family, sure, but everyone knows you get along with family more out of obligation than desire; to have a _friend_, someone who freely chooses to take part in your company, was something else. He'd accepted me without knowing who Suzu—the original Suzu—was, and with him I had been able to be myself, without any pretenses. I couldn't hate him. I could only hurt now that he was gone, the same way I had after Yoshiya died.

And in that vein, I couldn't hate Kakashi either. Death was ironic in the amount of life that it controlled, and he was very much under its sway. Besides, who better to despise me than Obito's best friend? I'd take his nastiness. It was well-deserved.

"Suzu-chan…" Rin murmured.

"I know Kakashi-senpai's a good guy." I nodded decisively and gave her a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, senpai."

Rin blushed. "I told you Rin was fine," she murmured, embarrassed.

Oh. Well, that _was_ true—she had told me right off the bat she would prefer that I just use her given name rather than a title—but I'd held off on it, mostly because Kakashi had been giving me the evil eye when she'd said it.

"Rin-san, then?" I asked, not opposed to heeding her request. I understood Japanese honorifics perfectly well, but I didn't really care much for them if people didn't mind.

"Rin," she said firmly. "Just Rin. Teammates are your family, too."

That… was really, really touching.

"Rin," I repeated, heart constricting a bit.

"Yes?" Rin smiled.

Maybe I shouldn't have tried to get close to her. Maybe I shouldn't have cared so much. I knew it wasn't my place to try and make friends with someone who I was letting march to her own annihilation, and I knew that it would only end in more guilt and more heartbreak for me, and I knew that I couldn't take another disaster. But as I stared into those warm brown eyes and took in that lovely smile and thought about nice it would be to share a companionship with someone after three lonely months, I found myself tearing down the half-formed walls I'd started building around my heart.

"You should just call me Suzu," I said.

* * *

Making friends with Rin meant one thing, and one thing only: I was going to change the canon. Obviously just by being assigned to Team 7 I had altered something, but I had no reason to believe that alone would save her. No, I had to do something bigger. I wasn't just going to stand by this time.

I began to follow her everywhere. If Rin had anything to say about my sudden clinginess, she didn't show it, and seemed to always be happy to have a companion along. Even on missions I stuck to her like glue, partnering with her whenever the team split and dogging her every step. Minato allowed it, probably thinking that I had attached myself to her to avoid being stuck alone with the more prickly of my teammates. He never suspected that I was on a mission to save the team medic from death.

And I'll be damned if I don't.

* * *

**A/N: The character for "bell" (鈴) can be read both as "suzu" and as "rin."**

**Oh, and for the Greek mythology majors itching to pounce on me for saying Atlas carried the world on his shoulders: yes, I know that he actually carried the celestial spheres, not the world. But the misconception is common these days and it came out before I could think, and it sounded so nice that I didn't want to take it out, and so I'm employing my artistic license. Sorry.**

**Anyway, sorry for the wait. School just started and the teachers are already piling on the work. I didn't really want to make anyone wait any longer, so it's shorter than usual… and a bit choppier. Team 7 all together is actually kind of difficult to write.**

**(Reeeally hoping Rin doesn't devolve into a Sue under my pen urgh.)**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	10. Age 11: Bells: Part 2

**Published: 9/10/2014**

* * *

**Age 11: Part 3**

_"You had your first kill in that fight, didn't you?"_

_"I... yeah, I did. First several kills, actually..."_

_"I'm sorry, Suzu. I should have stayed with your group. I knew you weren't well... and it was my responsibility to look after your health, physical and mental. If I'd stayed, you wouldn't have—"_

_"No, stop there. Leave it be. We've gotten past it now, and I'd like to keep it that way."_

_"...Right. Sorry."_

* * *

Itsuki was pissed.

_"You,"_ he hissed, shunshin-ing away from the counter and stabbing a finger down at my chest the moment I stepped through the door. "Where the _hell_ have you been?"

His tone was decidedly irate. I looked away and shoved my hands in my pockets.

"Around," I muttered edgily, peeking at him out of the corner of my gaze. Hazel eyes narrowed.

"Around," he repeated scathingly. "It's been five months without a word and all you have to say is you've been _around_?"

"A lot of stuff's been going on," I defended, agitated, as I tried and failed to control my need to kick my toes at the ground. Ninjas weren't supposed to have nervous tics, but that was mine: scuffing my shoes.

And Lord was I nervous. If I had a choice, I wouldn't even be here, but Rin had officially kicked me out of the hospital this morning. We'd been taking care of first aid patients all night long—a rotation had just ended so there was fresh batch of injured ninjas streaming in from the front lines—and since I'd managed to absorb quite a lot of medical knowledge by hanging around her so much, the hospital staff hadn't really cared I wasn't a trained iryou-nin, only that I knew how to properly bandage wounds and make splints. Now that things had calmed down a bit, though, I had been politely but firmly been told to _get out._

I felt uncontrollably jumpy. For the past two months I'd been successfully shadowing her, but nothing had happened yet, and it was driving me insane. I only knew about the aftermath of the kidnapping, not its happening; unfortunately, that did absolutely nothing to help me. I needed to stop it _before _it happened.

The pressure was incredible. My mind was constantly whirling with anxiety, keeping me up and tossing at night, always wondering, always asking, _What if it happens now? _

(What if Madara's agents were in the village at this very moment? What if they snatched her when she was on the way home? She was an orphan, so no one would miss her until it was too late. Hell, they were so busy at the hospital right now that they could pluck her right out and no one would notice! _What if she was already gone?_)

_Damn _it. Rin was going to _die _if I didn't get my shit together.

"...Are you okay?" Itsuki asked, withdrawing his hand and regarding me with the expression one gives a raving schizophrenic. I belatedly realized I'd just gone through one of my now-periodic psychotic episodes right in the doorway of his fruit store.

...Well.

"You don't look too good," my former-chuunin friend said slowly. "In fact, you look pretty bad. You're not... having a _break, _are you?"

The break he was referring to, I knew, was not a vacation. Unfortunately, I couldn't blame him for asking; I could probably convince a lot of people if I pretended to snap right now, Itsuki most of all.

"I'm not at the point just yet," I laughed dryly. "But I don't think it'll take much to get me sliding, either."

"What's wrong?" Itsuki asked, expression devoid of any mirth. I felt my wry smile fade. No, he wouldn't find that amusing, would he? Not after what he'd been through.

"...It's not something I can really talk about," I said after a moment. "It's kind of… classified." Classified by me, anyway.

"Then tell me about what's going on with that getup." Itsuki didn't miss a beat, pointing at my outfit. "You're not wearing your ridiculous zipper collar anymore."

I felt a flash of irritation. "Why does everyone give the vest so much flak?" I demanded of the universe, turning my gaze up toward the ceiling. It's not like it was unusual. Just about every Aburame I'd ever come across had a jacket like that. "It is _not_ ridiculous."

"Yes, it is. Why aren't you wearing it?" the brunet persisted, disregarding any thoughts of Aburames. I looked back down and scowled at him.

"Because I didn't want to," I grumbled. Itsuki gave me a withering look. "_What_?"

"I was hoping for a more inspired response," he informed unamusedly. "Suzu, don't try to mess around with me. If you don't tell me what's going on _right now_, believe me when I say I won't hesitate to get you flagged."

I felt a flash a panic despite myself. Getting withdrawn for a potential psychotic break was the last thing I needed right now; there was no way I could afford getting taken off of active duty, not when Rin was in danger. And hell, if that happened, it would only be a matter of time before the wrong person found out about what I knew. I shuddered and thought of Danzo.

"...Sometimes I really goddamn hate you, Mikawaya," I exhaled sharply after an extended battle of wills, opting instead to fix him with my best glare. It wasn't nearly as scary as it had been on my old face, me being an eleven-year-old and all, but at least I was finally at an age where I could start swearing again without being given incredulous looks.

(Well, not by ninjas, anyway. All ninjas know shinobi families don't make much of an effort to filter their profanity; sheltering kids is not something they do.)

"And yet you always come back." Itsuki rolled his eyes, unaffected by my woefully unintimidating death stare. "Well? It's been five months. I'm _waiting_."

"Look," I sighed frustratedly, pinching the bridge of my nose, "things have been rough lately, all right? I'm just stressed. I had a reassignment and there's been a lot of friction..."

"What?" Itsuki demanded, alarmed. "What do you mean _reassignment? _What happened to Akihiko?"

My mood, which had already been foul, immediately took a sharp nosedive. "He's gone," I said flatly, unwilling to recount the disastrous fight. Itsuki could interpret that statement however he wished. Let him think my friend died; things would be simpler that way. "Let's not talk about it."

Itsuki stared at me, astonishment quickly morphing into his usual calculating glint. He scrutinized me closely.

"You're not giving me the whole story," he finally declared.

"I'm not," I agreed as coolly as I possibly could, desperately hoping he wouldn't push it. If I needed to do it to avoid getting benched, I would talk about Akihiko, but I _really_ didn't want to.

"...Then what's got you so wound up? Clashing with your teammates doesn't put you to mental instability," Itsuki said shrewdly, mercifully not pursuing the subject of my face-breaking cousin. "It's not the reassignment. You're sitting on something big, aren't you?"

"...Maybe I am," I sighed half-heartedly, figuring any further attempts to hide it were futile. Itsuki always could figure me out. "Maybe it's huge and maybe I'm going crazy trying to figure out what to do about it."

"Talk to a superior if it's that big a deal. Hell, talk to your parents," Itsuki suggested. "Friends and family exist for a reason, you know. They'll help you sort it out."

"I _can't_," I snapped, feeling my temper begin to rise. I did _not_ need him saying I should tell someone. I was already having a hard enough time not spilling my guts to the first person who'd listen. "I have to figure it out on my own."

"And my neighbor's cat is the Rikudo Sennin," Itsuki immediately deadpanned. "Suzu, you don't do things _on your own_, not in this village. We put shinobi in teams for a reason, and it is _not_ to bottle things up and go insane when it explodes."

"Well, this is an exception." I said, gritting my teeth. Besides, who would actually believe me? I wasn't about to give my family another reason start scooting away from me at dinner. Haruka already ran away just at the sight of me these days.

"Don't try and act like you're special." He frowned. "Nothing will come of keeping it to yourself."

"Oh, piss off!" I threw my hands up. "Why won't people just leave me alone about it? I came here instead of the House to avoid this exact same lecture, damn it." I'd had two sit-down-and-talk sessions in the past week alone, and lately even Chiharu was telling me to take it easy. I was suffocating with all of these people breathing down my neck.

"If they're telling you the same thing at home, maybe you ought to take their advice," Itsuki advised wryly. "Chances are they're concerned for a reason. These kind of things tend to blow up in your face, you know, and I doubt you'll be the only one to get caught in the blast."

Upon reflection, I realize I really should have been thankful that he was looking out for me, but my sense of gratitude was pretty much nonexistent at that point. Common courtesy—or just decency in general, really—was the last thing on my mind. So I won't try to to hide it: I turn into an asshole under stress.

Itsuki said nothing I spun on my heel and stormed away, angrily jabbing my middle finger into the air as I went.

* * *

Once upon a time, somewhere in my mind, the act of walking upon water had been a miracle. Something strange, something supernatural. Something only a holy man from two thousand years ago had ever been purported to do.

Channelling chakra into my feet, I set one bare foot on the surface of the lake in the woods behind the compound, making sure to keep the flow constant. After taking chakra flow out into battle and maintaining multiple currents in the heat of combat, it was positively effortless. I was walking to lake's center before I knew it. Water seeped between my toes, splashing lightly with every step.

The molecules of liquids had different ways of interacting with one another. Two of those forces were adhesion and cohesion, the attraction between—in this case—water molecules to other molecules and water molecules to themselves, respectively. When the forces of cohesion outweigh those of adhesion, water operates as though an elastic membrane has been stretched over its surface. That was why some bugs, despite being denser than the actual water itself, can run on it without sinking in.

Chakra imitated nature in form—which was also why it manifested itself with an elemental nature—and, in the case of water walking, pond skaters. Through some unexplainable magic, it formed a layer of hydrophobic molecules that allowed people to run around on water like they were Jesus bugs. I was stumped as to how we, being bipedals, didn't break the surface tension anyway—unlike insects, ninjas can't distribute their weight at six different points—but somehow, it still worked.

A casual miracle.

Cutting the chakra to one of my feet, I balanced on the other swept my toes out across the water. Watching tiny waves ripple away from the contact, I let out a sad sigh at the irony of it all. Here I was, doing what only Christ could have done, and I still couldn't think of a way to keep one measly person from dying. If only I _could _make miracles...

"Suzu."

I blinked and turned, putting my foot back down. Minato was standing there in full gear, now-usual look of concern etched on his features.

"Are you okay?" he asked. I felt my expression flatten a bit.

"Fine." I made an effort not to glare. I was seriously going to smack the next person to ask me that. "Why?"

Minato lifted a hand, index finger pointed outward. I followed its trajectory up the sky, where a hawk was circling in a familiar pattern, letting out a periodic screech—Team 7's call signal.

"I sent a bird out twenty minutes ago, and everyone gathered but you," he said. "What happened? It's not like you to miss something like that."

I felt the blood drain from my face. I hadn't noticed it at all.

"Shit, I'm sorry," I said astoundedly, putting a hand to my forehead. "I don't know what... I mean, I didn't..."

"We'll talk about it later." Minato took out a sealing scroll and tossed it to me. "For now, though, we can't afford to waste any more time. I got your stuff, so let's go."

I was pale-faced with horror the whole run to the gates, where Kakashi, Rin, and a half dozen other ninja were waiting. The sight of it made me want to crawl into a hole and never come out; I had held up _two and a half platoons_ of ninja.

Forget getting flagged for a psychotic break, I was going to get _court-martialed_ for this. Dereliction of duty during wartime… psychosis was the least of my problems now.

"Where the hell have you been?" Kakashi immediately rounded on me. Too mortified to even speak, I just sunk into the lowest, most apologetic bow I could make, and stayed there.

"Leave it, Kakashi," Minato held up a hand. "I'll deal with her after the mission's over. Right now we need to focus. Let's move."

Everyone was off tree-hopping before I had time to blink. Rin quickly made her way to my side and brought me up to speed: Team 7, one of the few remaining units with a jounin pair, had been selected to lead a special task force behind Iwa lines to strike what the village hoped to be one of the final blows against the Hidden Rock. Under their joint command, we were supposed to attack one of their bases at a village on the Iwa-Kusa border. It was one of the strongholds preventing our forces from advancing into Earth Country territory and was a crucial point if we were to finally end the Third Shinobi World War.

Not for the first time, I found myself wondering what business a pair of thirteen-year-olds had with these soldiers, let alone an eleven-year-old. I was way out of my depth. What was I even trying to do here, clinging to the sides of these people, trying to stand as their equal? I was young and inexperienced, of an average talent, and frankly, a deadweight. How could I be expected to try and help end a war when I couldn't manage my own life? I was coming apart at the seams. Constantly ruminating, twitching with anxiety, lashing out at friends and family and neglecting my responsibilities… if I couldn't handle the stress of one person, how could I be trusted with an entire village? Itsuki had told me when we'd first met that the village was everyone's responsibility, but it was plain to see I wasn't up to the task.

Before I could help it, tears began to blur my vision. A tiny, pathetic little hiccup escaped my throat; that hiccup became a gasp, and then that gasp became a sob.

All nine of my comrades turned to look at me over their shoulders. I bit down on my lip hard and tried to control myself, but only succeeded in producing a strangled whimper; it came out sounding far too hysterical for my liking.

The look Kakashi gave me was one of abject disgust. For a brief moment my breakdown was interrupted by the thought that, for a guy who had recently had the lesson of respect for comrades smashed into his face, he still had the Shinobi Code stuck way up his ass.

"I'm fine," I gasped when Minato made to fall back to my pace. He fixed me with the face that said _I'm tired of your bullshit_.

"You are not," he contradicted in his commander's voice.

"I'm _fine!_" I very nearly screamed, barely managing to keep my voice down to a choked shout. "_Don't shame me any more!"_

And suddenly I came to a conclusion that I had been trying to avoid for months: I was ashamed of myself. Of my weakness, my inadequacy, my incompetence, my lack of discipline. My _unworthiness_. What had I done in my life that I was proud of? What was there _good _about me? Academy grades? A promotion? All of my accomplishments were so petty. Compared to deceiving my family, fighting with my friends, and failing to protect the people who mattered, they made me nothing. No, worse than nothing.

They made me _trash_.

Taken aback, Minato regarded me with a look that would have been shocked, had he not been in mission mode. For a moment, it looked like he was still going to come over, but after an eternity of a second he turned back to face the front.

(That was very Minato—if there was anything he respected, it was personal space. That was why, even when it was obvious I was sinking fast, he would look away. He always honored autonomy.)

We continued on in silence, my chest heaving with bitter tears the whole way.

* * *

The strategy was simple: one squad distracts, the other attacks. We formed two groups; Minato, who was an army all on his own, elected to lead a three-man-cell rather than evenly splitting our men. Kakashi was to head the main attack force while our sensei went out to scare the enemy ninja with his infamous flee-on-sight order.

For me, the battle was over as soon as it began. The entire fight was a blur; it was as if an entirely different person was controlling my body, slapping seals down and pulling limbs off. A mass of wire strings spun up around me, slicing through everything, turning the air a faint pink with their bloody tint. It was too easy: dodge, block, decapitate. Rinse and repeat.

I must've killed a hundred shinobi that day, but I don't remember half of it. When I came to and found myself standing in a sea of shredded Iwa ninja, utterly incapable of figuring out they'd gotten there, I learned one of the worst lessons in my life. It was far more horrifying than knowing that even little boys die, or that it's kill or be killed, or that even sometimes friends will turn around and betray you.

It was knowing that you must carry every life you ever take on your back for all of eternity. It is knowing that once you bloody your hands you will never be clean again. It is knowing that you are a _murderer_. Holding that within yourself, having learned from experience…

The lesson of killing was, by far, the most repulsively awful thing I have ever, ever come to know.

"Suzu," Rin murmured weakly, palm laid over her heart. Even Kakashi seemed a bit dumbstruck as he lowered the kunai in his hand. I looked down and saw the lower half of someone's torso.

A trembling hand came up to cover my mouth. Its fingers were painted a crimson red.

Oh, my God.

* * *

"It's insane. She shouldn't be on active duty. She needs a Yamanaka."

"We need to tell Minato-san to file a report..."

"Make sure you keep your distance if you don't want to end up being the one to put her down when she snaps. It's always worse when it's a kid."

I opened my eyes with a groan, feeling stiff and shitty. Quiet mmediately fell over the camp; the other ninja quickly jerked their gazes away when I mustered the strength to lift my head and look at them.

"You're up," Rin said with a smile of forced levity, getting up from her spot beside Kakashi. "That's good. Suddenly passing out like that… we were worried."

The expression on the collective faces of our team did indeed portray anxiety, but it was all too obvious that that concern was not for me. I groaned again and let my head fall back, putting an arm over my eyes.

God, please help me.

Rin came over and knelt at my side; the sensation of medical chakra sweeping over my head was by now a familiar feeling. I just laid here and let her run diagnostics.

"Minato-sensei and the others have been delayed by a squad of Iwa ANBU," she informed quietly, determined to try and fill the crushing silence. "He sent a summon to say they're not in danger, but regrouping is going to be difficult. Since we've made it back behind our lines, we've been told to stand by until they find a way back to us."

A long moment of silence.

"...Here's your belt pouch," she tried. I lifted my arm long enough to see her pull out my supply bag and offer it to me with her free hand.

"Thanks," I finally managed to say after a full minute of blank staring. I took it and flicked it open to check its contents; when a photograph fell out, I immediately regretted it.

Team 11 had lacked a jounin-sensei, so there were only three people in it. They were from another world, that trio, with their big smiles and laughing eyes. Akihiko was in the center—he was always the center—and Yoshiya and I were at his sides, grinning at the camera, unsullied by the war. Akihiko's eyes still held childish glee, and my arm looked almost naked without any covering on it. Only Yoshiya looked the same; death had stopped his clock before he'd had a chance to change. He would remain a smiling nine-year-old boy.

For thousandth time since I became a ninja, I felt my heart break.

"Are you okay?" Rin asked quietly, withdrawing her hand and letting the chakra fade. I looked up from the picture, feeling my lips part automatically. Fine, I felt the words on my tongue. I'm fine, don't worry, don't bother yourself. Everything's alright.

But then I shut my mouth and turned away, pulling a blanket over my head. I was tired of lying.

Rin left me alone after that.

* * *

Time passed. We waited for Minato.

I came to the vague realization that I wanted to kill myself.

* * *

**A/N: Short chapter again. Though to be honest, considering the content of this one, I think it's better for it to stand on its own.**

**It was really emotionally draining to write this chapter, by the way. I know that most good writers try to separate themselves from their characters, but this _is _a semi-self-insert, and let me tell you, this was actually really unsettling.**

**...dang, this story has gotten gloomy.**

**Anyway, thanks for your patience. The next chapter will probably take a while in its coming too, but rest assured that I'm still here, and I'm still writing.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	11. Age 11: Bells: Part 3

**Published: 10/14/2014**

* * *

**Age 11: Part 4**

"_God, I was a wreck the whole entire time."_

"_I'll say. Can you even comprehend how hard it was to carry all three of you back to the village?"_

* * *

Something was wrong.

I felt it the moment I blinked into consciousness: heavy wetness, like a raging storm about to break. It was as if someone had sucked out the air around the camp and replaced it with gaseous lead; a stifling, eerie silence had fallen, tense and foreboding.

I rose slowly, pulling my chakra in tightly and quietly drawing a kunai from my holster. Rin appeared on my right with her own knife in hand and signaled me, asking if I felt anything.

I bit my lip and concentrated. Though Minato's sensing ability was at the point where he was passively aware of all chakra sources within a certain proximity, I had no such skill—in fact, I had to spend all of my focus just to pick up faint whispers. As it was, though, the only thing I felt was a cloudy haze of chakra. I couldn't even feel Rin, who was right next to me.

Alarming.

"There's some sort of technique obscuring all of the chakra signatures in the area," I hissed, jumping to my feet and curling chakra in my palm, ready to slap a seal down at a moment's notice. "Someone's coming—"

Even today, I couldn't tell you what exactly happened at that moment. I know a thick blanket of mist rolled in, and I'm reasonably sure I heard the chirping of a Chidori erupting in the distance. Maybe there were a few short yells, I'm not certain. All I really know for sure is that the world fell apart. Panic consumed me; I spun in frantic circles, searching for Rin, but I could hardly see in front of my face. Coupled with the chakra-clouding technique, there was no way to find her.

She screamed.

"_Rin!_" I lunged forward wildly, futilely throwing my arms out and hoping I'd land hands on her. My fingers grasped air.

_No._

"Kakashi!" I screeched, not bothering to add a -san or a -senpai. "_They took Rin!_"

A blast of faintly crackling chakra immediately exploded several feet to my left, lancing through the technique's shroud and dispelling it. Kakashi was at its center, kunai drawn and Sharingan bared, ferocity bursting from his every movement. I whirled around, scanning the landscape for any hint where they might have gone, but the only sight that met my eyes was one of multiple shinobi, both Konoha's and Kiri's, sprawled over the ground. Several white-masked ninja were lying at Kakashi's feet, giant gaping holes in their chest—he'd run them through with Chidori—while others were strewn over the rocks in the area, kunai sticking out of their backs.

"Captain," one of the downed chuunin gasped. Kakashi took one look at him and dropped to one knee, pulling out a roll of bandages while yanking his hitai-ate back down with one hand. I rushed to his side, barely containing another full-out nervous breakdown.

_Oh my God no no no Rin Rin Rin—_

"You all stay here," Kakashi muttered briskly as he tied a quick knot, gaze full of purpose. "Take care of the others. I have to go after Rin."

"Captain, wait," the brown-haired man panted, glancing at me worriedly before turning to the jounin with pleading eyes. "We need… reinforcements. You can't go on your own…"

"I'm coming," I declared shortly, already feeling hot indignation welling up within me just at the thought of being made to wait here. "Don't you dare order me to stay put while Rin is out there. Don't you _dare_, Kakashi."

Ignoring summons, going on murder sprees, defying the captain... once we got back, the village was going to bench me so hard I'd get splinters. But I found that I couldn't bring myself to care, because _this was it_. I had spent so long building to this moment that I had no hopes or dreams left. There was nothing beyond letting Rin live.

The village could do what it pleased with me when this was all over.

Kakashi looked furious. His gaze held such a barely-controlled wrath that I was worried he might put me down for the mission right then and there.

"Take her, Captain," the chuunin on the ground next to us urged. Whether it was because he thought I was right or because he didn't want me to be nearby when I inevitably snapped and went crazy, I didn't know. "Let her... let her help you."

Kakashi barely glanced at him, for he was too busy setting his worst death glare upon me. I grit my teeth and held my ground, and we spent a tiny eternity trying to incinerate one another with our eyes. It wasn't until tears of utter, helpless frustration began spilling from my eyes that the silver-haired teen standing in front of me broke his suppressive stare in favor of taking on a look of alarm.

"_Damn it,_ Kakashi," I choked, angrily swiping my arm across my face. I was tired of tears. What I wanted now was to take _action._ "Don't make me stand by and lose another teammate. I _can't_."

The silence was not so much deafening as it was thunderous. It boomed and echoed, filling my head with a noise like a three thousand pounding gongs. I thought I might explode with the cacophony roaring in my ears.

"...We're wasting time," Kakashi finally said, turning away and pricking his thumb on a kunai. "_Kuchiyose no Jutsu!_"

For the first time since we'd met, when Kakashi Hatake glanced back at me over his shoulder, I saw the gaze of a peer. In that moment, we were not insider and outsider or strong and weak or superior and subordinate. We were Kakashi and Suzu, two members of Team 7, united in the need save the girl who was holding our worlds together.

Kakashi said nothing after that. Instead, he brought up a hand with two fingers extended and flicked it forward. We took off without looking back.

* * *

The extraction went flawlessly; the guards were easily diverted and our pursuants easily evaded. I was probably biased, but the trap in this whole arrangement was so painfully obvious that I wondered how Kakashi could have missed it. Why was their hiding place so conspicuous, their hostage so easily found? No scent covers, no decoys… he should have realized straight away. But then again, he was just as emotionally blinded by these circumstances as I was, and unlike me he had not the advantage of foreknowledge. The only thing he probably cared about at this moment was the fact that he had to keep Rin alive.

I could sympathize with that. At this very moment I was desperately trying to figure out a course of action, knowing all too well that if I didn't do something now, it would all be over… not that I was having much luck. I was too distracted. Every moment that passed was an unbearable reminder that we were drawing closer and closer to Rin's demise. Every word she said matched perfectly with the canon: _They performed some kind of ritual… There's something inside me… I can't go back. _

The inevitability of it all was crushing.

The two Mist-nin behind us chose that moment to attack, snapping me out of thoughts. My teammates and I went careening from the treetops and past the forest's edge, flying into the rocky wastelands in a barely-controlled freefall. Kakashi immediately unleashed a hail of kunai to cover our landing, but as soon as our feet touched the ground, the earth beneath us exploded in a cloud of dusty smoke screen. Ten ninja came flying at us from all sides.

Damn it, really? Had they been herding us to an ambush site the whole way? Now that I thought about it, was that part of Madara's plan? Had he actually intended to let the Sanbi loose in Konoha, or did he just not care so long as he found a way to break Obito? I didn't have much time to contemplate it, though, because I nearly got my head taken off by a sword.

"Shit," I grunted, flipping onto my hands and smashing my heel into one of the Kiri-nin's chin, barely managing to lay one hand on his shin before being seized by the ankle and chucked up into air like a rag doll. Though the throw sent me spinning, I managed to keep my wits about me long enough to slap my right hand onto my forearm and pulse chakra through the cloth of my arm warmer.

(Minato had spent an entire afternoon inking out the seals he had invented on my left arm. Combined, they had been large enough to cover the entirety of my scar, but I often covered it up anyway—no limb was was a more attractive target for dismemberment than the one covered in an important-looking black marks, after all.)

The seal on the man's leg exploded with wire at the same moment I felt the steel threads materialize around my fingers. With a burst of chakra his calf came clean off, and he crumpled into a heap. I made sure to smash one foot into the back of his neck when I landed on him, pushing down with chakra just in case. More than one ninja had died because of people playing possum, after all. Better safe than sorry.

"Get back!" one of Kiri-nin shouted. The shinobi around me scattered, immediately darting out of taijutsu range. "Don't let her touch you!"

Crap, I'd hoped they wouldn't pick up on me that quickly. These days I settled most fights by engaging in taijutsu, stealthily putting down seals—Minato had taught me how—and binding or removing extremities as needed. I cast a quick eye around, but Kakashi and Rin had vanished into the smoke. Probably just as these guys had intended, I thought as I felt sweat begin to gather on my palms. An eleven-year-old in a crowd of ANBU… God, that sounded like the beginning of a bad joke. One with a _really bad _ending.

Well, I only had one option, then. I clapped my hands together and laid a seal on my right palm before shoving it in the air and letting the wire spew out around me. I quickly put out a wave of wind chakra while twisting around, surrounding myself in a cloud of hyper-sharp near-invisible strings. It wasn't the perfect defense by any means, but as far as keeping people out of immediate stabbing range went, it would work. I could deal with projectile weapons at this distance.

I took a deep breath. Time slowed down for just a moment as I reached into my kunai pouch and withdrew a knife; it felt cold and unusually heavy in my hands. If I could keep out of hand-to-hand range, I might make it out of this alive.

But ANBU were considered the elite of the elite for a reason. Though I was unapproachable for a minute or two, after watching my movements they quickly realized I was adjusting for the wind. After that, all it took was one well-aimed wind release technique from the guy on the right to screw me over.

"Fuuton: Daitoppa!" he shouted. My Great Breakthrough had nothing on this guy's; I might as well have been hit by a hurricane. I barely managed to stay on my feet, anchoring myself with chakra.

Of course, there was no better way to catch your opponent flat-footed. Even though it only took me a few seconds, by the time I had reained my bearings, three different hands clutching three different knives were on a collision course with my skull. I let out a gasp, futilely trying to drop into a crouch, but there was no way I was going to make it in time.

At just that moment, though, Kakashi decided to start skewering people with Chidori. He shot out of the dust cloud in a blur, lightning sparking in his hand. I barely saw his arm go through the man's chest before he was rocketing off in all directions, leaving a trail of dead ninja in his wake.

For a moment, I was so relieved that I forgot myself. I had fought with more experienced ninja before, but never like this. In fact, when I was alone, Minato had a standing order to run away from any ninja group of three or more, regardless of their rank. Going solo against multiple ANBU was so beyond my depth that it wasn't even funny. I was going to need to burn ten bags of incense for the deity above watching my back, because living through that had been a miracle, no two ways about it.

My relief didn't last long, though. After resealing my wires, I looked up and saw a blur of black and white diving at Kakashi. For a moment, I thought it was an enemy, but then I realized the white on this person was below the waist, not on the face. And there was only one person here dressed like that.

I didn't know my shunshin could cross thirty yards in less than a second, but I suppose being under the tutelage of the Yellow Flash had allowed me to pick up at least a little bit of his famous speed technique. I seized Rin's wrist and yanked on it so hard it was a wonder I didn't rip her arm right out of its socket.

She jerked to the side just as Kakashi's arm burst through her back.

* * *

The next sequence of events took place in a space of seconds.

Rin choked out Kakashi's name. Kakashi stood there in shock as she slid off his arm. Both of my teammates fell over; I screamed their names; there was a flash of yellow.

Minato Namikaze streaked out of the air and into our midsts. His eyes made one sweeping glance of the area, taking in the billowing smoke, the surrounding ninja, and the sight of two thirds of his team down on the ground. Without missing a beat, my cousin hooked his arm around my neck before seizing Rin and Kakashi both by the sleeve. The moment he had his hands on them I felt a tiny pinch of chakra, and suddenly we were sitting in the grass.

Two Konoha ninja were staring at us over their shoulders, looking shocked.

"Taicho? When did you—" the one of the left began dumbfoundedly. "—what the hell?"

Flabbergasted, I stared up at my cousin. How in the world?

"I didn't think you were still carrying that around," he murmured, looking at my hand. I glanced down and was astounded find myself clutching a three-pronged kunai, slightly rusted and dull with disuse. Its yellow handle was peeling slightly, stained with dirt, but the seal on it was still in tact.

It was the kunai he had given me at Tatsumi River.

...No way. How the hell? This thing been sitting at the bottom of my kunai pouch all this time, forgotten for two entire years? Holy crap. How hadn't I noticed when I'd drawn it? Surely I hadn't been _that _distracted by the ANBU. How had I not drawn it before? For that matter, how did I manage to draw it after not realizing it was there for _two entire years_?

Wait, no, back up a moment. I staggeringly threw Minato's arm off and got to my feet, vacantly taking in the sight of trees and grass and a campsite. What was this place? What had just happened? It was if we hadn't been fighting for our lives two seconds ago at all. I took a minute to stare blankly into the air, trying to process.

And then...

"Rin!" I cried, horrified, as I whirled back around. Minato immediately jerked his head left and laid eyes on the gushing wound in the team medic's chest.

"Oh, no," I moaned, only half-aware of myself tangling my hands in my hair and falling backwards into the dirt. "No, no, no, no…"

Oh, God, it was all over. I'd failed. She was _dead_. After all of these months of sleepless nights and anxious days, following her all the time, anticipating every moment, I'd failed. I'd focused so hard on just her, pushing everyone out, family and friends, to _fail. _I'd plowed on blindly while letting everything fall apart to _fail_.

I tore my life apart to _fail._

"She's still alive."

"...What?" I breathed, looking up slowly. Minato was leaning over Rin, one hand above her mouth, the other rummaging forcefully through his pack.

"She's breathing, barely. She's alive," he muttered. His eyes immediately took on a look of unshakeable determination, the one he got when he was ready to move mountains. It was a glint of unbreakable focus. "Her thoracic cavity's been wrecked and her lungs are collapsing, but she's not dead."

"She's _alive?!_" I shot over, voice rising to a pitch I didn't even know it to be capable of. "She took a Chidori to the chest! I thought it was a one-hit-kill!"

"It missed the heart," Minato said, pointing to the hole. Now that I stopped to look, it was much farther to the right than I'd realized. "By an inch."

I felt my hands shoot up to cover my mouth. When I yanked on her arm—that had _worked_?

"But she won't last long like this," Minato murmured, withdrawing a scroll from his bag; from that scroll he summoned a bigger one, along with a calligraphy set. "Only emergency surgery from Tsunade-sama could fix this."

My stomach plummeted again. "Then…" I said, voice quivering, "...then it's too late?"

"Not if I have anything to say about it." Minato bit on the end of one of his brushes, as he often did when he encountered complex problems, eyes ablaze. "What do you need to do?" he mumbled to himself. "Classify. Okay, penetrating trauma… it's wide open. Air and fluid in the chest cavity. Heart's intact. Can this be even be called hemopneumothorax?" Minato blew out a sharp breath. "Need to stop blood loss. Need to keep her breathing. Need to… have to… but... _shit_."

Trembling like a child, I bit my lip and wrung my hands. Minato never swore.

I would never classify any movement of his as frantic, but he was far from composed as he began pulling out different seals from his scroll, glancing at their labels before tossing them aside. He had everything in there: storage seals, barrier seals, locking seals, exploding seals, gas-releasing seals… everything, it seemed, but something to save Rin. I felt blood begin to leak from my lip; every second he spend shuffling frenetically through his endless library was a second closer to our teammate's death. The two chuunin—whose names I couldn't remember—looked on in horrified fascination at the spectacle.

Minato's hands closed around a black scroll. I recognized it immediately: it was a scroll for storing corpses, known colloquially as body-bag seals. We used it to bring back casualties after battles; I'd actually used quite a few of them myself, having been sent on missions with Akihiko to clean abandoned battlefields of Konoha-nin's bodies. Beside delivering supplies and relaying messages, it was the third most common wartime genin mission.

Minato stared down at the scroll with his lips parted, gaze blank. My heart skipped a beat, and for one awful moment, I thought he'd given up. But then he scrambled for a clean scroll and took his brush to it, eyes wide. A seal bloomed under his hands, lines stretching outwards, spirals curling in, squiggles spreading themselves in rays like beams from the sun. With incredible dexterity and impossible precision, he filled in spaces with black marks and nonsensical symbols. When a bead of sweat threatened to drop from his temple and onto his work, he jerked his head to the side and sent it flying off into the grass. The sheer intensity of it was enough to make me stop breathing. Its effect was not unlike that of killing intent's—that is, completely immobilizing. There's something that happens when a ninja like Minato Namikaze focuses so completely and utterly on a single point. It was as though the world itself stopped entirely so it could witness his action.

As soon as he was done, a blast of controlled wind chakra dried the ink instantly. Minato gave it a single once-over, eyes scanning furiously, before he took a deep breath and smacked it onto Rin's stomach. A layer of chakra immediately began to coat her, thin over her limbs, thick over her head, and even thicker over the wound in her chest. Then it seemed to almost lock, ceasing all movement and forming some sort of cocoon. Rin seemed to freeze entirely; her chest stopped heaving and the blood stopped flowing.

A moment passed. She was perfectly still.

"It worked," my cousin breathed, looking both relieved and astonished beyond belief. "That… it actually worked."

"I…" I worked my jaw. "What did.. what did you _do_?"

Minato pointed at the body-bag seal lying next to his knee.

"I made one of those," he said a bit breathlessly, "and modified it for a living person. Replaced the storage function with a immobilization-barrier combination instead, kept the stasis one."

I blinked once, then twice, contemplating the implications of that.

"...Are saying you _stopped time_?" I asked, aghast.

Minato blinked and looked at me, brow furrowing.

"I… in a sense, I suppose," he murmured after a long moment's hesitation. "The stasis uses chakra to stop all cell function, so in a way, I've stopped her body's biological clock. That's not time-stopping in the traditional sense, though—that wasn't my intent. I just thought that if we could prevent brain death and stop her from bleeding out long enough to get her medical treatment…"

"So you stopped time!" I repeated, completely blown away. What the hell? Like, what the _actual _hell! I mean, if anyone could do it, it would be the fuuinjutsu space-time ninjutsu master, but, but… but still! One does not simply just… _stop time!_

Minato is a goddamn _hacker_. OP. _So_ OP.

"Oh my God," I let out a hysterical little giggle. "You… you stopped time. Rin's alive. Oh, God! _Rin's alive!_"

"...Suzu?" Minato asked slowly, eyebrows rising as he turned to face me. I began laughing harder.

"Minato, Lord, the look on your face right now!" I chortled, feeling all sense of control begin to slip away. It wasn't long before my laughter degenerated into gasping sobs. "Oh, God… you did it, y-you… oh, she's alive. She's _alive_."

She was _alive_. Christ, this changed everything. Rin's death had been the start of everything. What had I altered? What was going to be different now? I couldn't bring myself to think overmuch, though, because at the moment my brain was only bursting out with one single thought: _Rin Nohara was alive_.

And just like that, my knees were buckling and my face was planting itself into the ground. After nearly half a year of operating at my limit, I felt myself finally giving out. Now that my only goal had been accomplished, there was nothing left to hang onto. Willpower had kept me going for a long while, and now that it was over, there was no need to cling so desperately anymore. Now, I could finally loosen my grip. A deep-seated exhaustion immediately began taking me over, crowding out my mind and taking over my body. I let it come gladly, because oh, I was so tired. I knew, in some distant corner of my consciousness, that a shitload of crap was going to hit the fan when I woke up, but I didn't care. I was tired and I was going to rest now, and that was that.

It had been a long time since I'd had any decent sleep.

* * *

**A/N: Egads, I'm so sorry! It's been over a month, hasn't it? Yikes. This was a tough chapter, though, just saying. It's thick, it's heavy, and I'm not entirely sure it's well-done. What did you guys think? Was this believable? Was Minato too much of a deus ex machina? Are any of you upset that Suzu didn't get slaughtered by the ANBU like the noob she is? Did I give you mood whiplash from the angst-fest that was last chapter?**

**Man, this chapter makes me nervous. The canon-smashing has finally begun. None of my stories have ever progressed to a point where I could actually start overturning the plot, so this is uncharted territory for me…**

**Thank you all for your patience. I hope I don't let you down with the way I'm taking this story. I'm doing my best.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	12. Age 11: Bells: Part 4

**Published: 10/23/2014**

* * *

**Age 11: Part 5**

_"I would have come, you know, if I'd known. I wasn't angry."_

_"Really? …That's nice to know. I'm really glad, actually. I'd always wondered if you ever resented me for blowing up at you like that..."_

_"No… I knew you were sliding. I could tell from a mile off. I was more worried than anything else."_

_"…Thank you, Itsuki. It means a lot when you've got people to worry for you."_

* * *

Consciousness returned to me slowly, like honey flowing from a bottle: first a ballooning mass, then a steady stream, then a sluggish trickle and finally a few tiny drops.

I awoke feeling oddly refreshed. The usual tired haze that had pervaded my mornings was gone; I took a minute to relish the return of clarity to my muddled mind, breathing in and appreciating the air flowing through my nostrils and into my lungs before extending my arms and legs to stretch.

Or, well, trying to. As soon as I began to lift my hands over my head, my right jerked to a halt. There was a sudden pressure on my wrist, causing the bones in it to pop lightly. I glanced down with puzzlement and was greeted with sight of a padded handcuff binding me to the railing of what was immediately apparent to be a hospital bed.

I stared at it blankly for a whole five seconds before looking up and observing my surroundings. White walls, white ceiling, white sheets, and white curtains… the door was mercifully a dark green, and the floor a tiled brown, but there was no doubt about: this was a hospital. When I turned to look at the window, though,and saw a light net of chakra spread over it, its blue tint winking in the bright sunlight, I felt a niggling suspicion begin to form in my mind. A second examination of my wrists was all the confirmation I needed—the sight of a pink band met my eyes.

…_Great_. A psych ward.

I let my head fall back before putting my free arm over my eyes. Oh, God… I had known this was likely going to happen, but it was one thing to anticipate getting put in the crazy wing and another to actually be there. My mind promptly began to fill itself with a thousand questions: Am I stuck here? Will they let me out? Am I still a ninja? Are they going to dismiss me from the Forces like they did Itsuki?

Are they going to find out about the anime?

A terrible, violent shiver shot up my spine. Oh, God. Was I going to have to do a mindwalk with a Yamanaka? If that happened, I had no idea what I was going to do. There was no way to hide such a huge part of my head from that kind of inspection.

I was still agonizing over it when someone arrived in the doorway, a doctor in a white coat with light brown hair and pale gray eyes. His gaze somehow managed to look unfocused even when he was looking straight at me, which could probably be attributed to its lack of pupils. Well, there was a Yamanaka if I ever saw one… I found myself swallowing thickly, hands clammy with trepidation.

Instead of coming at me with a clan jutsu, though, he just took a step forward and slid the door shut behind him. "Misuzu Namikaze, is it?" he asked, even though I could tell from where I was sitting that he had a clipboard with my name on it right in his hands. His stare was direct but not oppressive; I sat up slowly and nodded, not quite sure what to say.

"Um," I coughed, clearing my throat when my voice cracked, "…Yamanaka-sensei?"

The man smiled a bit, taking a seat in the chair next to the bed—I noted a bit dully that it was bolted to the floor—and crossing his legs comfortably. "Clever girl," he said, leaning forward and propping his chin up with his hand. "Hayato Yamanaka. Hayato is fine."

"Hayato-sensei," I murmured, dipping my chin a bit.

"Well, intelligent as you are," he said a smidge wryly, "I guess you know what's going on here, don't you?"

"Guess I do," I sighed moodily at that, picking at my blanket. "I bet the mission reports were awful. They were awful, weren't they?"

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned," Hayato-sensei conceded with an unexpected amount of frankness. Then again, maybe it wasn't. Shinobi doctors, I'd noticed over the years, didn't really coddle people the way doctors from my old world did. After countless visits after countless training mishaps, I knew that well enough. No… they tended to tell it to you straight, no sugar coat.

"The members of your last mission have all reported erratic behavior on your part," the doctor informed. "In addition to distraction, they've noted several emotional outbursts, bouts of apathy, defensiveness, and aggression. Your team leader has observed a marked increase of irritability in you over the past few months, and there's also the concerning fact that you've committed your first kill on this mission." He glanced down at his clipboard. "The circumstances of that are not promising either. Compounded with the reports from your family and the unfortunate result of your previous team assignment, I can't say you'll be getting out of this one too easily, Misuzu-san."

I didn't really have a response besides to wince and look at the handcuff on my wrist, so instead I just said, "Suzu's fine, please."

"Suzu-san," Hayato-sensei amended. "Now that you're awake, I'll have to ask you a few questions. Are you alright with that?"

"I'll give it a shot." I tried to smile, but I got the feeling it came out more like a grimace. Hayato-sensei looked like he appreciated the attempt, though.

The questions were just about what I'd expected. They were subtly worded, but I caught their purpose quite easily: assessment of sanity, sniffing for evidence of everything from homicidal tendency to thoughts of rebellion. I was too tired to try faking any answers—not that I really wanted to, since I was pretty sure it was faking "I'm fine" that had brought me to this point in the first place—so I gave each of them an honest response.

"Thoughts of suicide?" Hayato-sensei asked, going down the list. I considered him for a moment, taking in his blank eyes and professionally detached face before letting out a sigh and rubbing my neck.

"…Yeah, a bit. On the last mission."

I'd expected some type of reaction to that, but to my surprise, he just ticked it off and went on. Huh… that was unexpected. I'd always had the feeling that psychologists switched gears when suicide came up. But then again, what did I know? He probably encountered that stuff all the time,. Besides, we were at war right now, so it was more than likely he'd seen quite a few cases recently. Shinobi offed themselves all the time either way.

Strangely, I felt relieved by his nonchalance. Admitting to it made me feel… embarrassed, almost. Even if these guys believed in seppuku, I'd always been of the thought that suicide was the the coward's way out. I suppose it was different if you killed yourself in the face of capture or something like that, but that wasn't the kind of suicide I had been thinking about. That would be a death of defiance. The one I had considered was more of a death of defeat.

"…That should be all for now," Hayato-sensei said, looking his papers up and down before nodding and standing up. "I'll be back in a little while to speak to you again, but for now, I suppose I'll leave you to your rest."

"Oh, um, sensei," I interrupted before he could leave. He looked at me inquiringly.

"Um, I know there must be some rule about potentially belligerent patients, but would it be possible for me to get this off?" I asked, flushing a bit as I motioned to my cuffed hand. "I mean, my word probably doesn't mean much, but I promise I won't try anything…"

The doctor took a moment to look at me appraisingly, tucking his clipboard under his arm. I fidgeted uncomfortably until he finally nodded to himself and took a step forward.

"You've been cooperative thus far, so I'm willing to give you a chance," he said, pressing two fingers onto my manacle. I felt a spike of chakra before it sprung open lightly.

Those... were chakra handcuffs. Like most of the Narutoverse's advanced technology, they operated off of seals—Minato, in fact, had been developing a more advanced type one as a project in his free time. It worked by sealing chakra from the appropriate persons—in this case, the doctor and probably the head nurse—into the base to serve as a verification for the locking mechanism. That way only those whose chakra was sealed inside could open them; any other chakra that came into contact with it was absorbed and dispersed to prevent jutsu use. In a way, Minato told me, they were handcuffs with a keyhole operated by a shotty capacitor capable of storing only specific type of chakra.

I gaped a bit. Due to their complexity, it took a huge amount of time to make the seals for chakra handcuffs, so most of the time they were only used on high-level shinobi prisoners. And, apparently, shinobi in the psych ward. Man, these guys didn't screw around.

"It'll go back on if you start misbehaving," Hayato-sensei cautioned, and the look in his eye told me he would not hesitate if I did. "But for now, enjoy your freedom. Also, in addition to not attacking anyone, don't try to escape or sneak out, please. It never ends well."

Well, _that _was reassuring. I took a moment to gaze at the chakra net covering the window; I could probably get through if I used Uncle Souhei's trick, but I doubted I would get too far—there were bound to be other precautions and traps. I didn't think it was worth it.

"I understand," I said.

It wasn't like I had anywhere to be but here, anyway.

* * *

A lonely week passed. I vaguely remembered reading somewhere that it was protocol to evaluate psych patients before allowing them visitors, so I knew to be only slightly perturbed by my sudden isolation, but it was jarring all the same. Unlike in my last life, which had been one almost _too _private, I had been born and raised in a communal lifestyle. Between days on missions with a team and nights caring for cousins at the crowded House, there wasn't much time for being on my own. Here, though… here there was no one to speak with over breakfast, nor were there were toddlers to play with in the afternoon. There were no evening training sessions or whispered bedtime conversations behind me at night.

The lack of company was extremely unsettling. For all the whining I did about noise, I learned then that silence was troubling. It gave rise to too much worry—worry if I was in trouble, if Rin was still stable, if I was going to reprimanded or dismissed. And most of all, worry about being found out. After all, if someone asked me what had started my slide, I couldn't just flippantly say "I was trying to prevent the death of a friend I saw in the future." Not if I didn't want a permanent residence here, anyway.

And there was still the concern about the wrong person finding out. I had considered it before, but Danzou Shimura knowing I knew the future, or at least a possible one? Not my idea of a good time. He'd have me in his clutches in a heartbeat, and I wasn't nearly stupid enough to think that that man couldn't break me, nor that he wouldn't try to. The likelihood I'd be killed after that was pretty much certain, too. And then considering what he would _do _if he got his hands on that information… No, that would not end well at all.

I never realized how much family stopped you from fretting. No wonder Minato still hung around the House so much. And no wonder that half of Naruto's cast had royal issues—more likely than not, it was because half of them grew up living alone. Now that I knew, it was hardly surprising that kids like Sasuke and Kakashi had problems.

I sat back with a sigh, flipping a page in the cheesy adventure novel one of the nurses had given me to pass the time. Usually I wouldn't read this stuff, but I was immensely grateful for it regardless—as it turned out, the psych ward was positively dull.

Had Itsuki spent time here before he had retired? From what he had told me, it sounded like he'd been far more unstable than me… did they still put him in a room like this? Did he have a window, too, or were his walls just empty? I found myself longing to talk to him, to ask him what he had done and how he had acted. I would kill for some of his advice right about now.

Though with that said, there was hardly any guarantee he'd be willing to see me, not after our last encounter. Heck, I certainly wouldn't want to see me, not after that episode. Sometimes I wondered why people put up with me at all.

I rolled over with a groan and buried my head in my pillow, throwing my book on the bedside table. How was I going to face anyone after I was out of here? Neverminding Itsuki, half of the kids of the House were terrified of me now, and speaking with Auntie and Uncle… there was nothing about that that could be said but _awkward_. Hell, I didn't even know if I would be able to talk to Minato after this. In a way, I suppose I was grateful for my visitors' ban.

Of course, the moment I thought that I was safe for awhile, the door had slid open. I barely looked up, thinking it was just one of the nurses again, but no.

What met my eyes was none other than the sight of one Kakashi Hatake.

Alarmed, I shot up and frantically began pulling my bird's nest hair into order, eyes bugging out of my head. Kakashi? What the hell was _Kakashi _doing here?

"Your doctor says you're allowed to have visitors now," he told me quietly as he shut the door behind him, almost as if he had read my thoughts. "I thought I would drop by."

Well, I couldn't deny I appreciated the sentiment, but I was still shocked nonetheless. Of all the people who would come see me, I had not anticipated _him_. After all, Kakashi could barely stand to drag himself to the hospital for his own injuries, let alone someone else's.

And he also hated me. That was a thing too.

"Uh," I finally managed to say after a full twenty seconds of fish-like gaping. "Well… come on in… I guess."

Oh, smooth. So smooth, Suzu…

Kakashi, for his part, just sat down next to the bed without making any snarky comments whatsoever. Alarm bells immediately began pealing in my head, and I regarded him with no small amount of suspicion as he settled himself uncomfortably in the plastic chair.

But instead of an attack, there was only awkward silence. Like, _really _awkward silence. Like, if-awkward-were-an-extreme-sport-this-would-be-the-championship-match kind of awkward silence.

"…How's Rin doing?" I finally said, unwilling to bear it any longer. Kakashi seemed to wilt a little bit.

"She's the same as she's been," he muttered. "Sensei's seal has been holding up, but no one thinks anything can be done about her. Our only hope really would be Tsunade-sama…"

…And Senju Tsunade, as far as most anyone was concerned, was a lost cause. I paused to think. Well, I knew she wasn't beyond hope, since she did come back and become the Hokage eventually, but… that was only because Naruto convinced her, and twelve years was a long time to wait. Was there anything I could do about that? Certainly not at the moment, not while I was stuck here.

"I see," I sighed after a moment. I would give more thought to it later. I was too tired to go back to plotting. I'd been doing that for months now and I _really_ needed a break from it. At least at the moment Rin wasn't in immediate danger.

Kakashi just deflated some more, shoulders sagging. It took me a moment, but I soon realized that he was probably feeling unbelievably guilty. After promising his best friend he would take care of her, he had nearly killed her, hadn't he? And the only reason she was still alive was because of the replacement member of the team that he loathed.

"It's not your fault," I mumbled, drawing my knees up to my chest and folding my arms over them. I lowered my chin and looked at him from the corner of my eye. "She jumped in front of you. You couldn't have helped that."

"I guess not," Kakashi agreed half-heartedly. The tortured look in his eye was awful. I wondered for a moment whether or not he should be the one in the hospital bed, not me. Wasn't there a significant amount of trauma in having nearly killed a comrade through no fault of your own? I'm pretty sure there was an arc in the anime where had become unable to use Chidori specifically because of this whole incident. Didn't he go see a psych for that at all? Or did shinobi not get taken in for mental health problems unless it actually interfered with mission capability? Though the Chidori block would have been a big deal to him, he had still been able to perform.

Or maybe they just couldn't have afforded to bench Kakashi of the Sharingan. He had been—no, he already _was_—an extremely valuable jounin, after all. Even though the war had ended at that point, Konoha would have still been in a scramble trying to put itself together after several years of conflict. I had to question the ethics of that, but after a bit of thinking, I wasn't surprised. It was easy to forget that Konoha, for all of its niceties, was a military dictatorship. I mean, there was a council and some advisors, but in the end the Hokage decided everything. The only way you could get something done without his approval was behind his back, the way Danzou did things. So really, who was to stop the man on top from doing whatever the hell he wanted? The Bloody Mist was probably a prime example of that…

"I'm sorry."

"Pardon me?" I blinked, starting out of my thoughts.

"I'm sorry," Kakashi repeated, staring down at his hands. "For everything. For the way I've been behaving towards you. It's unacceptable."

"I…" I gawked. Had he… had he just _apologized_? To _me_? Kakashi Hatake, who despised me with the passion of a thousand burning suns? I knew he was feeling down on himself, but that was…

"That's… I mean, it's not… you couldn't really help it," I stuttered dumbly. "I mean, I can't say I enjoyed it, but things haven't been easy for you either…"

"That's no excuse," Kakashi protested, looking intent on finding some way to chastise himself. "You can't say that I'm not part of the reason you're here. You can't justify my actions, not with that kind of result."

I opened my mouth to respond to that, but found that I didn't quite know what to say. Kakashi wasn't the sole reason I'd been declining over the past few months, but I'd be deluding myself if I didn't say he hadn't affected me. Doubtless his constant criticism had heaped a nice, fat load of shame and general feelings of inadequacy on my back, and that had been a stressful burden I really could have done without. Would I have gotten to this point if he'd treated me more kindly? I couldn't really say.

"You're not a bad ninja," Kakashi said frustratedly. "You're younger and you can't help but be behind, I know. You didn't choose to be assigned to Team 7 and you have your circumstances too. But even though comrades are supposed to treat each other with respect, I still…"

I was at a loss. Kakashi at this point in his life was still struggling to throw off his Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy attitude, and though I knew he would eventually mellow out and become the Kakashi Hatake I knew from _Naruto_, to see him at this moment, acting as he was, was nothing short of unsettling. I wasn't sure how to react.

(I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that people often say you should accept both compliments and apologies with grace, but as it turned out, "graceful" and "I am" are two things I can never say together in a sentence without "not" in between them. So instead of calmly smiling and accepting Kakashi's olive branch like a normal person, I put my foot in my mouth.)

"It's not like you're the only reason I went kind of nuts," I waved my hands. "I mean, maybe you did have a hand in it, but that's not really the point. I mean, not to say that I'm blaming you, but it's like, you know—there were things you didn't know about going on—and—I mean, not to say that you could have known… you were, you know, focusing on your own situation—"

"You can stop now," Kakashi sighed just a bit drolly. Even when he was depressed, it seemed, he still retained his snark. I immediately shut my mouth and burned bright red, burying my face in my knees. God, why was I such a socially awkward moron?

"I… just…" I mumbled. "Things suck right now, for both of us. I get it. Can we just… forget about it?"

"You want to just forget about it?" Kakashi murmured uncertainly, in a manner that suggested he found the notion impossible. "Act like nothing happened?"

"I'm tired of being upset about things," I told him gloomily, and it was true. What would I gain by being angry with Kakashi now, now that I was already here in a psych ward? Now that he was apologizing so guiltily? "At this point, I don't think we're doing anyone favors by holding grudges. Against each other or ourselves."

Kakashi was silent for a long while. And then, after several minutes, he said, "Maybe you're right."

* * *

My days at the hospital proceeded something like this: wake up, eat breakfast, talk with Hayato-sensei, do some kata under supervision, eat lunch, read, eat dinner, sleep, and repeat. I finished the cheesy adventure novel and burned through all three of its sequels in two days; after that, I read a manual on dosages for sedatives that Hayato-sensei had been carrying. After _that_, I got my hands on a genealogy of Konoha's major and minor clans via Kakashi, who apparently read that sort of thing for fun.

As it turned out, over half of Konoha's minor clans were related to the Senju. The other portion of those came from the now-extinct Hagoromo clan, which had branched many little clans before dissolving completely. The Namikaze clan—and the Hatake clan, which had been circled in red—was one of those offshoots, apparently. I related this to Hayato-sensei at one of our morning sessions.

"That's interesting," he tilted his head. "Did it say anything about the Yamanaka in there?"

"Only that they came along as vassals to the Akimichi, along with the Nara," I shook my head. "I didn't really look too heavily at that section… and I already gave it back to Kakashi, too. Sorry."

"No, don't worry," Hayato-sensei laughed a bit. "If I really wanted to know, I would just look at the clan archives. In any case, I'm glad to hear you and your teammate are getting along now."

I smiled a bit shyly. Kakashi had begun visiting me quite often, at least three times a week. His stays were usually pretty short and the conversation wasn't particularly inspired, but it was really quite touching to that he kept coming. He was the only one coming, in fact. I had received a note from the House informing me that Auntie Reiko had managed to break a leg while we were gone, so Uncle Souhei was too busy preventing a prepubescent apocalypse to come. As for my everyone else… well, Rin obviously was out of the picture, and I doubted Itsuki even knew where I was at the moment. And Minato…

"Still nothing from Minato-nii?" I asked, twisting my fingers in my bedsheets. Even though he had been the one to have me admitted, I was going on my second week here and had still seen neither hair nor hide of him.

"I'm afraid not," Hayato-sensei shook his head. "I know it's frustrating. We've been talking a lot and I know you've managed to sort many things out, but as you know, basic psychotherapy alone isn't enough for discharge. We need your commanding officer's approval… And as you can guess, he's still pretty busy right now."

"Is he?" I blinked. "I didn't know that. I haven't seen him since the mission started, after all."

To his credit, Hayato-sensei only looked incredulous for a second or two. Then his eyes lit in understanding; he excused himself for a moment before returning with the front page of a newspaper.

"It's easy to forget news doesn't reach the patients here easily," he explained apologetically as he handed it to me. "Here. This should answer your question."

Blinking, I accepted it and looked down at the front page. Then I felt my jaw detach itself from my head.

"…_What_?"

"I can't believe Hokage-sama decided to resign half a month ago and no one bothered to tell you," Hayato-sensei shook his head. "You had no clue this whole entire time that Minato-san was too busy to see you, did you? Hokage-sama named his as Yondaime three days after you returned, after the Iwa forces we were driving toward the Land of Wind were stonewalled by Suna. After Sandaime-sama ratifies the treaty with the Tsuchikage, he's going to officially step down and Minato-san's going to be inaugurated."

Gobsmacked, I could only stare down at the page in front of me. Minato's grainy image stared back at me.

"…This isn't a joke, is it?"

"No, it's not."

"Why didn't Kakashi mention it?" I croaked. "He never said a thing!"

Hayato-sensei's brow creased. "Perhaps he thought you already knew," he said after a moment of speculation. "Or maybe he thought you didn't want to talk about Minato-san. A lot of people would be angry to be admitted to a psych ward without their consent, after all."

"I never said I was!" I protested. "He can't just assume stuff like that and decide to withhold information!"

Hayato-sensei raised an eyebrow at that. "My dear, you are a ninja living in a Hidden Village," he said. "Your entire life is built on the principle of need-to-know."

"I…" I faltered at that. "But… but he's my big _brother_. Don't I need to know?"

"Not all the time," Hayato-sensei shook his head gently. "But that's neither here nor there. You know now: Minato Namikaze is about to become the Hokage."

I couldn't find anything to say after that. Hayato-sensei, sensing a mood coming on, allowed the session to end early and left so I could think on my own.

I got up and stood at the window. Leaning forward as far as I dared, I craned my neck and caught sight of the top of the Hokage Monument beyond the top of the other end of the hospital. The sight of construction scaffolding on the rock was just barely visible.

My chest began bursting with anxiety. Minato… was going to become the Hokage? But… that couldn't be right. It was way too soon. If Minato was going to become Hokage, that meant that Naruto was going to be born soon. And if Naruto was going to be born soon, _that _meant that the Kyuubi attack was going to happen soon. And if the Kyuubi attack was going to happen soon, _that _meant—

—Wait, no. Oh my _God_, no.

_The Kyuubi attack_.

The blood drained from my face. I hadn't planned for that at all.

* * *

**A/N: I really didn't want to make you guys wait another month, so I did my best to crank this one out. Not a lot happened in this chapter, really… but we could probably all use a moment to decompress. Last week was pretty huge. Though with that said, the end is getting us somewhere.**

**On another note—how do you all find the pacing of this story? Is it too slow? Too fast? Not enough show, too much tell? I resolved when I first started this that I would try not to make some sort of 999,999,999+ words novel, but is that detracting from the flow of the story? My outline says I'm actually behind where I wanted to be, but if it's going to make my plot crappier, I'm willing to put it aside.**

**Please give me your thoughts.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	13. Age 11: The Truth: Part 1

**Published: 11/11/2014**

* * *

**Age 11: Part 6**

"_Hayato thought you'd lost it. You should have heard him yelling at himself after you'd left… he was so upset, saying things like 'I never should have allowed this' and 'I should have known it would be too stressful' and 'it's my fault if she gets discharged over this.'"_

"Discharged_? Did he think I was going to assault him or something?"_

"_Probably. But I'd panic too, you know. Imagine if _your _boss woke up in the morning and heard that you let loose a psych patient who went crazy and attacked the Hokage on his inauguration day. You know how strict they are in the psych ward, too—his career would have been over."_

"_Jesus, all of that over a party? You guys should have just left me where I was…"_

_"Maybe. But I know you're glad we didn't. You needed it."_

_"...Yeah, you're right. I did... thank you."_

* * *

The day of the inauguration came and went. The psych ward emptied itself of staff, leaving behind only a slightly grudging skeleton crew, and the quiet shuffle of the halls faded into total silence; in contrast, the village outside became increasingly noisy, sounds building up until it seemed like there was a constant dull roar rolling through the air. When nighttime came, the sky filled with a continuous boom-pop-pop-boom as fireworks exploded all across the village. It was like New Year's and Obon were both going on at once.

I watched it all go by from my window, hair pulled into a sloppy, messy bun, chin propped up on my hand. It was hard to see much in the direction of the Hokage Monument, since the rest of the hospital was in the way, but my view of the rest of the village was quite good—the psych ward was near the top floors.

I only glanced over my shoulder when the door to my room slid open. Hayato-sensei strolled in, dressed not in his usual white coat, but a casual gray shirt and black pants; I saw the Yamanaka clan's mon on his back when he turned to shut the door. He had a brown bundle under one arm.

"Enjoying the view?" he asked, coming over to stand with me at the window. Even though his hair was looking rather windswept, his appearance was otherwise completely undisturbed. That was typical of him, though, as I had come to understand over the course of the past three weeks. Nothing could ruffle his composure.

"It's nice," I murmured, picking at my sleeve absentmindedly. And it was. The war was over now; the Sandaime had ratified the treaty and officially announced his retirement. The war hero Minato Namikaze was now the Hokage, and the Hidden Leaf Village could rest easy knowing its people were finally safe, standing with an armistice and the most notorious man of the Third Shinobi World War as its shield. After everything we'd endured over the past few years, it wasn't difficult at all to watch people go all-out celebrating for the first time in what seemed like ages. Even if I could still see the storm on the horizon, it didn't diminish the relief of the Third War's end.

Now, at least, they'd stop burying children in the cemetery.

"Yoshiya," I sighed aloud, leaning my cheek into my hand and turning to look at the Yamanaka doctor beside me. He regarded me gravely, as he always did when my old teammates came up. "I _am _glad, you know, I really am. It's good that it's all over. It's just… it still hurts the heart to know he would have made it if he'd just stuck it out a little longer, you know?"

"I understand," Hayato-sensei replied with solemn nod. "Dying so close to the end… it almost makes it seem futile, doesn't it?"

"A bit," I admitted, twisting my fingers together. "But it's not like he didn't die without honors. He's on the Memorial Stone. He was awarded posthumously… his family got all the dues they were owed. Everything was in order."

"I know you're not satisfied with that." Hayato-sensei shook his head. "But that's alright too, you know. Who would be? A name on a rock, a medal, and some money… would that be enough to compensate for anyone?"

"No," I sighed again. "No. It never could be."

Could you really weigh Yoshiya's death and all of the suffering it had brought with it against a sum of money and some words of honor? Maybe some people could be satisfied knowing a friend died in the line of duty, but it would never be enough for me. It made the wound sting a little less, sure, but it would never be enough to stop the bleeding. No amount of glory could heal a broken heart.

"I have a proposal for you," Hayato-sensei said, snapping me out of my ruminations. He held up the brown bundle in his arms, revealing it to be a jacket and a pair of outdoor sandals. "If you promise to listen to me, not run away, and come back when I tell you, I'll take you down into the village tonight."

Wide-eyed, I turned to face him fully. "Is that allowed?"

"Not particularly," Hayato-sensei admitted. "But have you seen this place? It's deserted. You're a ninja, and I'm sure you can lay low long enough to sneak out of this place with me. It's not like anyone else was going to come check up on the patients tonight besides me, anyway, and I've already seen to everyone else."

"Won't you get in trouble?" I asked, not quite believing what I was hearing. In most cases I didn't usually have too much of an issue with rule-breaking if no one got hurt, but coming from Hayato-sensei… it was strange. He was probably the strictest doctor around here, and this place was _strict_.

(Case in point: inpatients aren't even allowed to handle writing utensils without supervision. Someone had once tried to take a nurse's eye out with a pen, apparently, and ever since then… well, you could probably guess. In any case, not a lot of trust was afforded the people here—it _was_ a hospital wing full of slightly unhinged professional killers, after all.)

"I won't if you don't tell anyone," was the blithe response. "Besides, it's not like I don't have an ulterior motive. There's something I want to do while we're out."

"And you need me to do it?" I raised an eyebrow at that, not entirely certain on how to feel about that. What would a Yamanaka psychiatrist need a little girl from the psych ward for? Nothing particularly good jumped to mind.

"Your presence would help," Hayato-sensei replied a bit dryly, though without elaborating. "You will come, right? Unless you _want _to stay here…"

"No, I'm coming," I said quickly, grabbing the jacket and shoes. "I'm long overdue for a case of cabin fever. Let's just say we're taking preventative measures if anyone asks."

* * *

I felt a bit awkward, standing around in a jacket that did nothing to conceal the fact that I was dressed only in a hospital-issue jinbei. The fact that it was currently November only made me feel more self-conscious of my thin, indoors clothes. Still, I did my best not to be bothered. I wanted to enjoy the first taste of freedom I'd had in almost a month.

Against my protests, my escort bought me a candied apple from a stall set up next to the main road, excusing it as fair payment for assisting him in whatever his "ulterior motive" was. Proper social conduct demanded I accept it graciously after he insisted for the second time, so I took it and proceeded to regard his every subsequent move with suspicion. Gentlemanly as he might appear, I knew Hayato-sensei was ninja born and raised, and being a ninja myself, it behooved me to be skeptical when possible.

It was still very sweet, though.

From the main road, we broke off to cut through the marketplace, dodging under waving banners and weaving through crowds. Every now and then we would stop and Hayato-sensei would point out people in the crowd, deducing their purpose or demeanor through observation alone. That lady was a mother of at least three children—she dressed as a married woman, and she carried nappy sack on her shoulder with experienced confidence—one of whom was probably throwing a fit, judging by the harried manner in which she was seeking out some sort of toy or treat. That man was single—he was hitting on girls unashamedly—and not particularly ordered in nature, evidenced by his stubbly chin and generally dishevelled appearance. He glanced over his shoulder at the group of young men playing cards behind him quite often, suggesting he was trying to impress his peers.

"You're a regular Sherlock Holmes," I said, impressed, as Hayato-sensei pointed out another man who was purportedly married and searching for his child, likely a daughter, who was under the age of ten. Sure enough, after he dove into the crowd and reemerged a few moments later, a little girl in pigtails was in his arms.

"That sounded like a compliment, so I'll say thanks," Hayato-sensei replied mildly. "You've got a strange way of speaking, Suzu-san."

"Yeah, I get that a lot." I blushed and readjusted my jacket. "Still, what's a ninja without her quirks, right?"

Hayato-sensei gave me an evaluating look. "It's been a long-standing hypothesis of mine that one's level eccentricity indicates skill as a ninja," he said seriously. "Many of my peers have told me repeatedly that correlation is not causation, but I'm properly convinced that there's some sort of causal relationship between those two factors. I've even derived a scale based on the cases I've come across so far."

"Er…" I blinked, taken aback. I had meant that as a joke, but I didn't think he would actually take me seriously. "That's… cool, actually. Have I got a rating?

"Well…." Hayato-sensei considered me, putting a hand under his chin. "You've got a good home life and your family is pretty stable despite your lack of parents, but your Genin team ended tragically. You suffered an extremely painful and mildly disfiguring injury upon your first C-rank assignment and your relationship with your current team has been mostly strained up to this point. You've had at least one period of severe depression that you're still technically working on. You've got a few odd habits related mostly to speech and thinking aloud, and you tend to be comedic in your blunders. Weighing all of that against your current skill, age, training resources, and growth rate, I'd say that in terms of potential, you could probably hit B- or A-rank a few years into your twenties. You're not quite tragic enough to reach S-rank, though."

….Well, that was one way to hang a lampshade on Naruto ninjas' tendency to have sob story-pasts. Hayato-sensei continued to stare down at me, face perfectly straight.

"….I'm glad you think so highly of me, I guess?" I asked more than said. "Er…. bet you could make a killing using that to bet on people in the Chuunin Exams."

"Its accuracy relies on how heavily I've analyzed the case." Hayato-sensei shook his head, still completely unbothered. "It would probably work to some extent, but not so reliably as to wager money with."

"Oh," I frowned. Hayato-sensei shrugged; we walked on in silence for several seconds. Then I blinked, stopped, and looked around.

There was a lovely brown house to my left, large with an upstairs balcony and a spacious yard. On my right, tight rows of browning summer plants were nestled in the earth, fenced in by tiny wooden posts. The road below me was a familiar one; I knew its every bend and curve, for I had walked it each day of my life.

"Wait, what—?" I asked, whipping my head about. Yuuno-jisan's house… Suzuka-san's flower patch…. A few lanterns with the Namikaze crest were hanging about, and even the damned cherry tree stump was there standing before us. "This is the compound!" I gasped. "When did we get here?"

"I was wondering when you'd notice," Hayato-sensei said amusedly, folding his arms. "For such an observant girl, you're surprisingly unaware."

"What are we doing here?" I demanded instead of answering that. So much for behaving like a ninja, Suzu…

"See for yourself," Hayato-sensei shrugged and motioned down the road that lead to the House.

I spun around and saw a crowd of people crammed onto the porch. There were so many that they were literally spilling off its edges; my cousins lined every inch of its surface, jostling and peering over each others' heads and chattering unintelligibly. Uncle Souhei stood at their front, Haruka clinging to the hem of his shirt.

"Oh, Lord," I said a bit faintly.

"Hayato," Uncle Souhei called, an uncharacteristically wide grin splitting his face as he raised an arm in greeting. "Thank you for this. I owe you."

"Not at all, Souhei," Hayato replied warmly, going up to the porch and bumping fists with him. "You never ask for anything from me, anyway."

…._What_?

"Do you know my ojisan?" I gaped. Souhei Namikaze _never _behaved so familiarly with people. I didn't even think he was _capable _of a brofist like that.

"I would hope so," Hayato laughed a bit slyly as he turned to look back at me. "We were genin teammates, you see. That was why I needed you for my ulterior motive—you were an excuse to invade his house. It was part of the deal, you know. He wouldn't have let me in otherwise."

…_What_?

My uncle's genin teammate had been my doctor for nearly a month and he hadn't even bothered to even _mention _it?

"I asked him to pick up your case when Minato told me what happened," Uncle Souhei explained, mirroring Hayato-sensei's impish smile. I found myself holding back a scowl; I had never seen a more blatant look of mischief. He was _definitely _the mastermind behind this. "It wasn't easy, but he said he'd bring you home for your birthday at least. And he kept his word."

My… birthday? I felt my irritation fade as I accessed my mental calendar and calculated the date. We'd left for the mission on November 2nd, spent three days running about Earth Country, returned home… two weeks… a few days…

"It's the twentieth," I exclaimed, disbelieving. "It's… my birthday. It's my birthday?"

"We were surprised too," Chiharu told me, leaning casually over Tenrou's arm. There was a red party hat fastened to her head with elastic; Tenrou was holding a noisemaker. "I always thought your birthday was the 27th."

"We didn't think this party was going to happen," Akira added. "I mean, you've been at the hospital the whole time, it's niichan's inauguration, everyone's ridiculously busy and obasan needs help around the house… But we made it work, I guess."

Oh… oh, my. That was… perhaps the sweetest thing someone had done for me in months. My heart swelled with emotion.

"Are you crying, Suzu-nee?" Haruka asked, peeking out from behind Uncle Souhei's pant leg. When I blinked and touched my cheek, my fingers came away wet.

"I… I guess I am." I gave a watery laugh. "Huh… weird, isn't it?"

Haruka pursed her lips and stared up at me critically, looking me up and down. Her eyebrows scrunched up, and for a moment, she only stared; then she abandoned Uncle Souhei's shins in favor of mine, bounding down the steps and wrapping her arms around my legs.

"Don't go away again," she muttered, squeezing. "I'll miss you."

The hiccups started then. Haruka hadn't touched me in weeks. "I'll do my best, Haruka," I wept, burying my face in my sleeve.

"You have to promise," she insisted.

"I can't always help it… and you know I've been gone on missions for longer before," I managed to choke out.

"That's different. You came back normal then," she protested. "But you didn't come back normal until now. You have to promise that you'll always come back normal again after this."

"I…" Wordless, I looked up at Uncle Souhei, standing there with my messy hair and blotchy tearstained face in my crumpled jinbei and borrowed brown jacket.

Had it really been so long since I'd been myself? Had I really been such a stranger?

He just smiled.

"Welcome back," he said.

* * *

To my great surprise, there was a flaming redhead tearing through our kitchen. Though Auntie Reiko was sitting at the table, placidly chopping up vegetables with one leg propped up on a chair, Kushina Uzumaki was a whirlwind of frantic activity, lifting lids on pots, reaching up into cabinets, throwing spices into dishes and ladling soup into bowls.

I'd never spoken much with Kushina. I'd seen her with Minato in the village every now and then, and I'd said hello, but I never stuck around for much longer no matter how curious about her I felt. Even if they both insisted I was welcome to hang out with them, I remembered distinctly from my previous time as a young adult that small children were the worst kind of third wheel.

"I'm almost done, dattebane!" she yelled, gaze ablaze as she whipped her cooking chopsticks in my direction. "You sit tight, kid, and I'll serve you a dinner you'll never forget!"

"Er," I said, shifting from foot to foot awkwardly while readjusting Haruka's grip around my neck. After I'd made to go inside, she had climbed up my side and fixed herself to my back like a koala, refusing to let me alone. "Thanks…?"

"Happy birthday, Suzu," Auntie Reiko said, smiling at me from her station at the cutting board. She said nothing else, for which I was immensely grateful. For a little while I had been concerned my family members would get weird with me, knowing I'd been in the hospital for a mental evaluation, but everyone was so incredibly chill about it, it was like I'd never left. "Kushina-chan volunteered to help cook dinner when she realized my leg was broken. It was quite sweet of her," she added, turning to give the redhead a thankful nod.

"Minato was ready to throw a party himself when he found out I would be cooking, so I don't mind," Kushina replied with a grin equal parts shyly embarrassed and hopelessly roguish.

"Niichan is coming?" I asked. My alarm must have showed on my face, for both women turned and looked at me concernedly.

"Of course, dear, it's your birthday," Auntie Reiko said, looking troubled. "Minato never misses a birthday unless he's on a mission."

"He's only running a bit late because of all of the well-wishers and politicking morons," Kushina added. "Are you upset with him?"

I… had not expected to be asked that directly. I had seen the question in many people's faces so far, but I hadn't actually thought anyone would voice it. Flustered, I took a moment to stutter stupidly.

"Well, no, that's not it, it's just that—it's, you know, it's just that he's going to—" I said haltingly, trying to explain the fact that he would be dead in a few months without actually, you know, _explaining_. "No, what I mean is, he's, you know…"

"Suzu-nee, I'm not hungry yet," Haruka whined, tugging on my hair. "I want to play with Kaneko-chan."

"Oh, do you?" I exclaimed, never more grateful for a child's short attention span. "Well, we'd better go do something about that!" I declared, fleeing the scene shamelessly.

I sped out of the kitchen before either Kushina or Auntie could speak, dodging under Shiori's arm and skipping over a spew of wooden kunai strewn across the floor. Sensing an ambush around the corner, I dodged a charge from Haruka's agemates Masahiko and Koji before crouching down, prying her off my shoulders, and setting her down next to Kaneko, the only other girl her age.

"You can't have heard them coming with all of this ambient noise," Hayato-sensei said curiously, appearing above me out of nowhere with one hand on his chin. Startled, I looked up. "Nor did you see them. Are you perhaps a chakra sensor, Suzu-san?"

"Only just barely," I replied wryly. "I didn't feel you coming at all, if you didn't notice."

"No, that's normal," Hayato-sensei shook his head. "I'm a Yamanaka—we specialize in both sensory perception _and_ deception. I'd be concerned if you'd noticed me. But I'm quite curious as to how you've come across this ability. Even if you've learned techniques made for use by non-sensors…."

"Natural sensors aren't uncommon in our clan," Uncle Souhei pointed out from his seat on the staircase railing. As he said this, though, he raised an eyebrow and waved a black journal with a blank cover at his genin teammate. "Reiko's one, and so is Minato. If I recall correctly, her dad was a decent chakra sensor as well. I wouldn't be surprised if he passed it down."

"If a child has a sensing talent that doesn't manifest immediately in infancy, it won't appear until adolescence," Hayato-sensei mused, eyeing the leather book with a creased brow. "And Suzu-san did not show evidence of a sensing talent whatsoever. I know—they test every child at birth, and I have her files. Even if she is a born sensor, she's a good two years early to be developing abilities."

It took self-control I didn't know I had to keep the alarm off of my face. That, I was fairly sure, had something to do with the fact that I probably _hadn't _been born a sensor—likely it was a side effect of secretly being from another universe. Hayato-sensei and Uncle Souhei traded significant looks; the latter of the two flipped open the book before tossing it over.

Before I could ask what exactly it was they were doing, I heard the front door slide open. "I'm home," a familiar tenor called, immediately producing squeals of delight from the children in front of me.

"Minato-niichan!" came the collective cry as they got up and mobbed their way to the genkan. The older kids followed too, but at a more sedate pace.

"Okaeri," Auntie Reiko replied, hobbling out of the kitchen on crutches. Kushina shot past her and quickly bestowed a hug and a kiss to the smiling Minato before zipping back into the kitchen, where pots and pans immediately began clanging again. Several minutes of clamor ensued.

Hesitantly, I hung back in the doorway, behind the crowd of family members. Several of my cousins cast wide-eyed glances between us, jerking their heads back and forth as a hush began to fall over the hallway.

When Minato looked up from the children no longer clinging to his knees, I shoved my hands in my pockets, feeling my mouth twist itself into a severe frown. Slowly, the people between began to scoot to the sides of the hall, opening up a path between us. Sweat began to gather on my palms.

"Suzu," Minato said hesitantly. He looked as he always did: spiky blond hair, intelligent blue eyes, neat jounin uniform… for a moment, the normalcy of his appearance almost deceived me into thinking nothing had changed. Too bad the white flame-patterned longcoat draped over his shoulders ruined that effect.

I dreamed Naruto dreams every now and then. Sometimes I went to bed and rewatched bits of the series, seeing Haku dying or Sakura slicing off her hair. Sometimes I saw Sasuke standing off with Itachi in a hallway, or Naruto sprinting through the trees, or Gaara lying dead and coming back to life… but I never dreamt of Minato's episodes. If I saw him at all when I slept, it was in my regular dreams, the kind where you're doing mundane things like climbing a tree or playing a game.

And now I knew why.

For a brief moment, just a few seconds, really, my mind replayed the one time we had seen Minato Namikaze wear that coat in life. The entirety of the Kyuubi attack flashed before my eyes, from Naruto's birth to his parents' deaths; the most awful went shudder crawling down my back, over my skin and throughout my entire body. The image of countless black-clad shinobi assaulted my vision, standing arranged in ranks before a row of picture frames, gazes turned downward under a horrible gray sky.

It was no wonder I never saw his episodes. If I ever dreamed a dream like that at night, I'd never go to sleep again.

Before I could help myself, I imagined myself standing at that funeral. I'd be in line with Kakashi and Gai and the other kids my age, dressed head to toe in black. Would I just stand there in silence like the rest of them? Would it be like Yoshiya's funeral, when words had died in my throat before they ever had a chance to stir the air? Or would I scream and cry and weep and wail aloud, the way I had wanted to when I'd stood over his grave realized that I'd never see him again? I didn't know.

But I didn't want to find out.

"Suzu-san?" Hayato-sensei asked, gaze sharp and legs tense. I wondered distantly if he thought I was about to lose it. Did people act like this right before they snapped? Had he seen many people snap?

But I didn't snap. Instead I turned to the side and pressed my back again the door frame, bringing my hands to my face and inhaling deeply. I stayed like that for several moments, feeling the gaze of the entire House rest upon me. It was nearly a minute before I finally was able to speak.

Minato was standing over me when I looked up; I could read the worry in his eyes even though his face was completely blank. I stared up at those eyes, heartbeat quickening until I could hear it pounding in my ears, and made a decision that I knew I would never be able to unmake.

I couldn't sweep in and save him like a superhero. I couldn't even save him like a blundering idiot. Rin had shown that it was impossible to save anyone on your own—you needed to work together with others. No… I couldn't do this on my own. There was only one solution now.

"I need to talk to you," I said.

It was time to tell him what I knew.

* * *

**A/N: Announcement! Glory officially has a sidestory supplement. Akihiko's interlude has been relocated there. There's not much in terms of content, but I expect a couple other things will pop up soon.**

**Anyway, here is the part where things get screwy. Canon's about to fly out the window, and I'm excited, but at the same time I'm also freaking terrified. I want to write this so badly, but I've spent so much time building to it in my head that I'm scared I won't be able to write it to the standard I've been building. Wish me luck, friends…**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	14. Age 12: The Truth: Part 2

**Published: 12/10/2014**

**Edited: 12/27/2014**

* * *

**Age 12: Part 1**

"_The lessons worth learning are always the hardest."_

* * *

"..._What?_"

Even though I knew Minato's sealing was impeccably perfect—and that therefore it was impossible for the privacy seals I had so insistently bullied him into erecting all over the girls' room to fail—I still glanced anxiously at the window, wringing my hands. By this point in my life I had had so many conversations interrupted by that window that it was an immutable habit of mine to watch it whenever I was having a sensitive talk.

Not that this could properly be described as _sensitive_. Sensitive could only be a crowning understatement for this mess.

"I realize that I am not presenting the most convincing case at the moment," I mumbled, turning back from it and twisting my fingers in the cloth of my shirt. "I guess the fact that I'm still technically a psych ward patient doesn't help, either." I looked down at my hospital-issue clothes and cringed a bit.

"No, it really doesn't," Minato replied, lacking all of his usual good humor. Usually he was at least faintly amused whenever I said something crazy, but at this moment, he looked like he couldn't be farther from it.

"But it's true," I said despairingly, holding my hands out palms up, knowing full well that he was thinking I'd finally gone completely insane. "Do you even realize how hard it is for me to do this? I was going to take this knowledge to the grave, you know. If I could have died without telling anyone about it, I would have been happy. Because now..."

I looked down at my lap. Because now, oh, the life I'd been so blissfully leading was going to change forever. Oh, I know it hadn't been an entirely easy life, because there had been days where I had been ready to just quit and go get myself killed in the field, but I'd be lying if I said it hadn't been a good one. Someone had always been there to support me, after all. Someone had always been looking after me, thinking about me, waiting for me to come back home. That was a privilege even some of the greatest ninjas couldn't claim to have.

And I was about to lose that.

"You'll hate me," I said, feeling tears well up in my eyes. It hurt just to think it, the concept of being hated by him. "All the years of deception. All of the things I could have done. It's unforgivable."

"I think you're overreacting," Minato said soothingly, completely unconvinced of my tale. "Even if you have been hiding your origins like you claim, that doesn't undo the time we've spent living here under the same roof together. No one's been hurt by what you say you've done."

No, he was not taking me seriously at all. He was full on "comfort my psychosis-suffering little sister" mode. And on one hand, while I did relish in the fact that I had a brother who was just so damn _nice_, I was _not _liking the way this was going. All of this will have meant absolutely nothing if I couldn't get him to believe me.

"How would you know?" I demanded frustratedly, swiping the tears off of my face. "You don't. You don't know that you're one of the people I've hurt most of all."

And hadn't I? He would never show it to anyone, but I could tell that even now he was suffering over his team. It was in his eyes. On the days when he was distracted enough that even his sensing talents could be deceived—in the scant few moments when I caught him when he thought he was alone—his shoulders sagged and his gaze turned downward, weary with grief. He tried so desperately hard to show how reliable he was, putting on a strong and unshakeable front… But any ninja knows that those are the people who hurt the most.

Knowing I was responsible for that made me hate myself with a ferocity I didn't know I was capable of. It really was no wonder I had never told him before now… nothing was scarier than the idea of Minato despising me with the same intensity that I despised myself.

"Suzu…" Minato sighed, putting a hand on his neck. "Look, I can tell that you're not trying to play a joke or anything. I know you're being serious. And I'm not doubting that you _believe _you're telling the truth… but sometimes ninjas try to separate themselves from their hardships by doing things like creating alternate identities, as a coping mechanism. No matter how much you protest you can't change that. You know what the logical conclusion is."

"Sometimes the universe is illogical," I muttered, sounding petulant despite myself. "If the universe were logical, this wouldn't be happening at all. I'd be sitting back at home, loafing around on the couch with a laptop. I most certainly would _not _be trying to convince the Fourth Hokage that I'm not crazy."

"Well then," Minato said, regarding me solemnly. "Okay, let's try this. Going against all rules discouraging delusions, I'm going to ask you to give me proof. Prove to me that what you're saying isn't a product of a psychotic break. Prove that you're… from a different universe… and I won't think you're crazy."

Of course it would come down to this. I sighed heavily, running a hand through my bangs and scrubbing the last bit of moisture from my face with the of my sleeve.

"I don't know what to tell you," I said. "It's not like I got to drag along any of my belongings from my old life, you know… this isn't just something that pulling out my ID and showing you a driver's license could really fix."

"No, I suppose not," Minato agreed, looking sterner now. "But that doesn't diminish my need for evidence. If you want me to believe you're not mentally compromised, Suzu, you have to _prove_ it. If you can't, Hayato-sensei has to know. This isn't a matter we can afford to take lightly."

Oh, of _course _it wouldn't be. So this was what it came down to. Prove my story or be forever labelled as insane. As if there wasn't enough riding on this already!

"What can I say?" I bit my lip. "I… how about English? My native language, English, it's totally different from what we speak here. Can that be proof? I'm fluent in a language this world has never seen? I can read, write, and speak it, if you need me to."

"I don't think so." Minato pursed his lips. "With no way to confirm it's actually a real language and not some sort of elaborate code or cipher, it's not enough."

"But you've heard me using it ever since I first arrived here," I protested. "Didn't my weird verbal tics start up when I was five? All those times I said things like 'God' or 'Jesus Christ,' or, heck, even my gaming slang like 'hax'... that's consistent with what I'm telling you, isn't it?"

"It is," Minato acknowledged, "and if it's true, it would explain a lot. But I don't know if it is."

"_Great_." Damn these ninjas and their super paranoia. "What can I do, then? Everything I have to offer to you, there's no way of confirming it. Literally I can only give you my word."

"It's a conundrum," Minato said, looking unusually unsympathetic.

For all of his kindness and patience, he really could be quite harsh, couldn't he? I felt myself wilt a bit at that. Having never been on the receiving end of that particular brand of ruthlessness, it was hard to keep myself from falling apart upon being exposed to it.

No, no time for wilting. _Think_. There had to be _something _I could use. Something to prove that I wasn't from this universe… something that he could confirm…

…

"Damn it," I muttered, putting my face in my hands. I was screwed if I couldn't come up with something soon… but I couldn't. Maybe I really should have planned this out more because there was just _no time_. I could literally feel it slipping away from me—every second that passed pooled into my palms before draining away through my fingers, like water in a cracked bowl. Trying to gather as much as possible but unable to retain any of it for a leak in the bottom… they were like water drops falling from a too-heavy raincloud.

...Raincloud? Cloud…

Unbidden, a flashback assaulted my mind. A of Kumogakure meeting with Konoha's Yellow Flash on the battlefield. Squaring off. "The man who singlehandedly prevented the Kyuubi's retrieval," he had said.

"That's it!" I blurted, jerking upright, hands flying to cover my mouth. Minato blinked.

"Yes?" he asked slowly.

"Kumogakure, they infiltrated our village when you were a kid," I rushed to say, practically shaking. Of course… I just needed to check one thing, and then… "Didn't they? To kidnap someone, they did."

Minato's brow creased.

"Do you mean when Kushina—" he started. Then he jerked a bit. "How did you know that? We were sworn to secrecy about that incident. Sandaime-sama didn't want it getting out they had managed to sneak in and out of Konoha unopposed, and he made sure no one else knew."

_Oh_, holy mother Mary, yes! Yes, that was _exactly _what I had needed to hear! "That's it!" I cried, throwing my hands into the air. "That's my proof. That's my proof that I'm from a different universe."

"Explain," Minato demanded, brow creasing so deeply I thought his forehead might split in half. "I don't follow your logic. You've been perfectly rational up to now, but you've lost something this time."

"I just gave you top secret knowledge that Suzu Namikaze would have no way of ever knowing," I responded, waving my arms wildly. "If the secret was between you, Kushina, and the Third Hokage, you know there were no leaks. The only way I would have known was if one of you three told me—and obviously, you haven't. If I didn't get the knowledge from you, there is no place in the universe I could have gotten it. That means the knowledge is from a different universe, and _that _means I have knowledge from a different universe. And if I have knowledge from a different universe, the only explanation is that I am _from _that different universe."

There was a long, pregnant pause in which Minato only stared at me. And stared, and stared, and stared. I slowly lowered my arms and felt myself begin to shrink a bit.

Was that not enough? Was it too much of a jump? But he _had _to believe me. Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth, right?

It _had _to work. I had nothing else to give.

Finally, my cousin shook his head. "How could that knowledge come from your universe?" he asked. "Is it… some sort of parallel Konoha, or something, where Kushina's kidnapping was common knowledge?"

I faltered a bit. If just convincing him that I was from another universe was so difficult, telling him that I knew because of a comic book franchise centered around his yet-to-be-conceived son was likely going to be impossible.

"I…" I trailed a bit dumbly. How in the world could I explain myself? "Uh… well, you know how we have lots of stories about legendary ninja like the Shodaime, or Uchiha Madara, or even the Rikudo Sennin?" I asked fumblingly, scratching my head. "I… suppose it's kind of like that. It's the story of a legendary ninja to whom you and Kushina were a relevant party. Her kidnapping was included to explain a part of his story."

Okay, that was really pushing it. Said like that, there was a lot of space for Minato to make some very incorrect assumptions about how similar Earth was to the Narutoverse… but that was a matter for another time. First, all I needed was for him to believe—I could get into the details later.

Several seconds passed. Minato continued to stare at me; I could practically see the neurons firing in that massively analytical brain of his, processing information, searching for patterns, connecting bits of knowledge until he could see the full picture. I took a moment to bite my lip and take a deep breath.

At this point, that was all I could ask of him. At least he just wasn't dismissing me now. And after all, finding the truth when it was obscured was what he did best—it was what made him such a great ninja. He had spent his entire career sifting through the subterfuge of other shinobi, after all… seeing underneath the underneath was his job. And maybe, just this once, the universe would take pity on me and let him pick out the the truth in my story, too.

Finally, after a tiny eternity, he sighed and leaned back. "Do you know anything else?" he asked tiredly, running a hand through his spiky hair. The look on his face was one of exhausted resignation. "If you have any more, I've got a massive leak to address."

I regarded him with wide eyes. "Do you believe me?" I asked, barely daring to hope.

Minato sighed once more, rolling his shoulders and briefly shutting his eyes.

"It's not impossible," he said quietly, opening them again. "At the very least, everything lines up… though I know I'm missing key pieces here. But if you tell me everything, I'll come closer to the truth—and if you're telling the truth, that's what you want. So if you really need me to believe you, tell me your story. The _real _one. Don't leave anything out this time."

I flinched.

"You've become talented in using half-truths," he observed, expression veiled. "Don't think I couldn't tell. But then again, perhaps you've been using them all along. And if that's the case… I don't think I know who you are anymore, Misuzu Namikaze."

Oh, God. I looked down at my hands and found that they were shaking, because this, _this_ was coming dangerously close to a place I _really _didn't want to be. I had spent my whole life here on Minato's good side. As one of his precious people, even. I _really _didn't want to be anywhere else.

"You'll hate me," I whispered once more. "You will."

"If you insist, then perhaps so," was the inscrutable reply. "I suppose you'll have to take that risk."

Humans are innately selfish creatures, and I have said before that it would be many years before I truly learned the lesson of acting for others at the cost of myself. But that day, in that moment, as I weighed my love for Minato Namikaze and my relationship with him—the countless days of sitting on the veranda together, talking, doing chores side by side, playing together and eating together and training—against his life, his importance, and his inseparable duty to the village that had raised me and brought me to where I was now, I took the first step towards in understanding.

"The story's set in your future," I said softly, hanging my head. "It's already begun. I know exactly what's going to happen to you, right up until the moment you die."

For a moment, I expected him to react. To question, to say "that's absurd," to scrunch up his nose and begin postulating the ramifications. But Minato continued to watch me, unmoving, gaze expectant, and I knew without prompting what he was waiting for.

So I steeled myself and began recounting Kakashi Gaiden for him, scene by scene, line by line. Beginning first with Obito's lateness, detailing his lack of jounin present for Kakashi, through the encounter with the Iwa scout, Rin's kidnapping, Kakashi's losing an eye, everything up to the cave-in and beyond. I had spent countless guilty nights replaying it to myself in my head, so I knew every second of it by heart. The details came with ease.

At first, Minato's gaze was blank. But realization came to him soon enough. Shock, disbelief, and anger came quickly followed; above all of those, though, was a look of wounded betrayal. When I had finished he had only the burn of my treachery in eyes.

"You knew about Kannabi Bridge," he said, completely flatly. "You knew. You knew Obito was going to die."

I could have explained. For a moment, I considered it: telling him that well, actually, he's not really dead, you know? The situation is still fixable. We might be able to save him, it's not as bad as you think.

But the second I thought it I felt like scum. No, I couldn't do that. I couldn't insult him like that. He deserved better.

No more excuses. No more bullshit.

"Yes," I whispered back, clenching my fists and bowing my head again. "I knew."

There was silence. I stared down at my lap and awaited my judgement.

Slowly, Minato stood and held up a hand. The black markings on the wall pulsed before fading away. He stood over me for a moment, wordless; he didn't shake, but his hands curled into fists, so tight that his knuckles turned white. I couldn't bring myself to look at his face.

"I'm going out," he said, voice completely removed of any inflection. He was across the room and out the window in a heartbeat, the tail of his coat flickering away in a shunshin. I was left alone to kneel at the center of the room for several minutes, staring at the floor.

Then I put my head in hands and listened to the deafening sound of silence.

* * *

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Sullenly, I looked up from my jello cup at Hayato-sensei, who was sitting in his usual cross-legged position on his usual chair. It was hard to believe I had gone illegally traipsing about the village with the prim and proper doctor before me, dressed as he was in his crisp white lab coat, carrying his official-looking clipboard and looking so remarkably guiltless.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said moodily, jabbing my plastic spoon into the jello's translucent depths.

"Don't try and play that game with me, Suzu-san," was Hayato-sensei's cool reply. "You've earned yourself a lot of leniency because you've cooperated with me so far, but don't expect special treatment if you start acting difficult. I know you're going through a stressful time, but there is no reason for you to start behaving that way."

"What if I just want to be a whiny brat in her rebellious stage?" I muttered mutinously. "I'm an angsty twelve-year-old going through puberty. Can't I behave like one? You can't deny me the right to act my age."

"Maybe not," Hayato-sensei agreed evenly, "but I can certainly _treat_ you like a twelve-year-old. Would you like that, then? I'll stop speaking to you like an equal and only ever bother to address you with condescension."

For a moment, I debated whether it would be worth losing the jello just to have the satisfaction of throwing it all over his face. I curled my lip and gave him a dark look.

"I recommend you choose your next words carefully," he suggested blithely.

"Okay, fine," I said with an explosive sigh, dropping my food onto the table cart and flopping back into my pillows. "I talked with Minato. I admitted something upsetting to him and he left without saying anything. Are you happy?"

"Are you?" Hayato-sensei raised an eyebrow. "It's never about me, Suzu-san. I'm not the patient here."

"Do you always have to have a witty response?" I groused. "I'm trying to throw a temper tantrum here. Humor me."

"You're too old for temper tantrums."

"I'm twelve," I exclaimed, throwing my hands up. "_Twelve!_ Pubescent! I am at the height of immaturity!"

"No, you're not," Hayato-sensei contradicted patiently, resting his elbow on his knee and propping his chin up with his hand. "Don't make excuses. You've never been twelve. You skipped those years altogether—very kid your age has."

"I _want _to be twelve," I ground out. "I know I shouldn't be. But I _want_ to be twelve. Can't I just be a child?"

Oh, God, won't anyone just let me be a child? But I knew I had no right to ask that. I had had my chance to be twelve, and that chance was over now. It was unfair enough I had gotten a reset. No one else got that kind of chance.

"The guilt coming off of you is palpable," Hayato-sensei observed. "You're trying to alleviate it by blaming it on your age, but you know that's not a valid excuse, and now you're feeling even guiltier. Am I wrong?"

"You're the doctor, figure it out yourself," I snapped, jerking my head away, but I knew he was right.

"...They say a confrontation or two is healthy for relationships once in a while," Hayato-sensei sighed in response a moment later, leaning back and letting it go. "I wouldn't worry overmuch. You've gotten along perfectly well with Hokage-sama before this, haven't you? I don't see why a single fight will change that."

"You don't even know," I said flatly, turning to look at him with my best glare. "He _despises _me. He'd be insane _not _to."

"Forgive me for not taking your overly emotional statement seriously," Hayato-sensei replied, raising an eyebrow, "but I would say you're really not the best person to judge that."

"It wasn't something _trivial_," I found myself snarling, stabbing the spoon his direction. "Don't look down on me and think that it was something small just because I'm a kid, because it _wasn't_. Kids are _plenty _capable of making huge mistakes."

"Did I ever say they weren't?" Hayato-sensei questioned, face now taking on the just slightest hint of irritation. "You don't think I know what twelve-year-olds are capable of? I'm a ninja psychologist and there are _rapists_ here in this wing younger than you are. Get some perspective, please—this sort of narrow-mindedness is not befitting of your intelligence."

My mouth immediately went dry. Did just he say… _rapists?_ Younger-than-me rapists, as in… _twelve or younger _rapists?

"You're from a war generation," Hayato-sensei said, giving me a deeply unimpressed look. "Did you really not expect that sort of thing to happen? From the get go, most people your age are murderers by now, anyway. I thought you would know best of all what monsters this kind of conflict breeds."

"I…" I stammered, feeling like someone had dropped two tons of bricks on my head. He... was _right_. He was _absolutely_ right. That was exactly what my generation was, wasn't it? A generation of murderers. I _should _have known that best of all—I was carrying the title of killer with the weight of a hundred lives myself, after all. How could I possibly forget that?

"Suzu-san, any shinobi carries any number of vile mistakes," Hayato-sensei sighed. "You're not an exception, no matter what it is you've actually done. And the people here aren't exceptions, either. But has it occurred to you that neither is Hokage-sama? His hands have had far more time to accumulate filth than yours, you know. Do you really think he's going to judge you as harshly as you're insisting he will?"

"...What?" I whispered, feeling my heart stop.

"He's got no right to judge you, just as you have no right to judge him, or anyone else here," Hayato-sensei told me gently. "No one does. You're only a single human being, Suzu-san. And he is only a man. A great and powerful man, yes, but a man nonetheless. He may have authority, but he's not the jurist of your soul. Don't act like he is."

"He's only a man?" I echoed stupidly.

"Did you think otherwise?" Hayato-sensei asked wryly. "He's a human being. And he's got emotions, too, no matter how well he controls them. Don't think the world is ending because his mask cracked. It only means he trusts you enough to let it break in front of you."

Shell-shocked, I could only stare at him, mouth agape. He offered me a small, faintly saddened smile.

"Sleep on it," he advised kindly, standing up and waving a hand at the window. Mechanically, I turned my head to look at it; somewhere along the way it had become pitch black outside.

"There's a lot of ugliness in the world, and that's why these sort of things happen," he said. "But it's a natural part of life, and life will go on. It always does."

* * *

**A/N: Lord, I'm so sorry, everyone. I know it's been a ridiculously long time, and I know I cliffhangered you all very badly. But this was a predictably difficult chapter to write, and it's been very hard for me to bring it to a standard I was satisfied with. Now, though, I think I've finally gotten it to that point… thank you all for understanding. I only want to write something I'll be satisfied with.**

**Anyway, I'll keep it brief—no need to put of posting any longer. The canon derailment has begun, so here's to hoping for the best.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	15. Age 12: The Truth: Part 3

**Published: 12/16/2014**

* * *

**Age 12: Part 2**

"_It figures you'd go straight for the poetry, you sissy."_

"_But they were such nice pieces… and besides, Kushina, poetry from _another universe_. How could you _not _be interested? Just think… an entire world of completely different styles and subjects and authors. Doesn't it make your heart race?"_

"_...Yup, definitely a sissy."_

* * *

A single red crayon. I spun it in my hand, taking in its skinny shaft and rounded tip, feeling its peeling paper sleeve brush over my skin. I took a long look at the door before sighing and shutting my eyes, searching for the warm mass of chakra in my stomach. After spending a few moments just letting it burn brightly in my mind, I slowly let my awareness drift farther away from my own center, zooming out until I could feel all of the chakra sources on my side of the floor.

Six bright blobs at the wing's entrance… three or four more wandering down the hall… Hayato-sensei's chakra signature in his office. I waited to see a moment where everyone was going before nodding to myself and opening my eyes again.

Good, it didn't seem like I was going to get walked in on anytime soon. I reached under my pillow and pulled out a small stack of folded papers, which I had filched from the nurse's station on the way back from an escorted trip outside. The crayon I had been carrying for two days now, since I had taken it from the House on the twentieth; of all the hiding places the staff checks here, it seems, they never go for a hair bun. I was immensely happy I'd put off getting a haircut.

At first I just made mindless shapes, circles and triangles and hearts and stars. Then I started drawing flowers and swirlies and whatever else fit my fancy. It was only after I had made a cluster of trees that the thought of writing occurred to me.

_The woods are lovely, dark and deep_, my mind said as I fixed my gaze on the tiny red thicket. Robert Frost, had that been? It'd been so long since I'd last looked at literature, especially since coming to this world. I suddenly felt extremely saddened by the thought that no one around me would know who Robert Frost was. Nor Emily Dickinson, nor Keats, nor Poe, nor Lewis, nor even Tolkien—

The alphabet came easily even without the years' worth of muscle memory my old body had carried. How could I ever forget? First I wrote my letters in print, capital and lowercase, and then cursive. After that, I took a fresh sheet of paper and wrote down what I remembered of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," puzzling over punctuation, wracking my brain for a few lost nouns. When I was done, I sat back and sighed again, thinking about the little horse and the frozen lake and the empty woods, filling up with snow.

After a moment of staring gloomily up at the ceiling, I took up my red crayon again and penned out the one about the slant of light, though I couldn't remember anything from third stanza at all. I recalled nothing about hope being the thing with feathers besides the opening line, so after a few minutes of contemplation I abandoned Dickinson and found myself going back to Frost, scrawling out the one poem that almost everyone from my old world had known.

"_Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,"_ I muttered to myself aloud, testing my tongue on the syllables of what had once been my native language. The sentence was unmistakably English to my ears, but somewhat disturbingly it carried a Japanese accent. Perturbed, I spent a few minutes determinedly repeating the sentence until it came out sounding like the Midwestern American I had once been was speaking again.

"What would you sound like in Japanese?" I murmured a few moments later, holding up the paper and looking at it with the light from the window. A block of waxy lines stared back at me. "How would it go? Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both, and be one traveler, long I stood…"

"Is that what you've been writing?" a voice asked from the center of the room.

Alarmed, I shot up straight and slammed the paper down onto my overbed table with wide eyes, immediately stuffing my crayon down my shirt with my other hand. Minato Namikaze was standing there with his hands in his pockets, white overcoat hanging from his shoulders.

"I-I," I stuttered dumbly, pressing one hand against my heart at the sight of him. Holy _shit, _when the hell had he gotten there?

"I've been here for some time," Minato answered my silent question, striding forward and coming to stand at the side of my bed. "I was going to speak with you, but you looked pretty absorbed… what is this?"

It took me nearly half a minute to respond. "It's… poetry," I finally managed to say, brushing a hand over the paper. "From—from my old universe."

I expected the conversation to take a nasty nosedive there, but Minato looked intrigued. "How does the rest of it go?" he queried, sounding genuinely curious.

"Er? Well…" I scrunched my eyebrows together. "Um… and be one traveler, long I stood, and looked down one as far as I could…"

"What's that one say?" he asked once I'd finished, pointing to my pitiful attempt at Dickinson. I uncertainly translated what I could of that too, not really knowing where he was going with this.

"Whose woods these are I think I know…" I murmured when he looked at the first poem I'd written down.

"Were you much for poetry before you came here?" Minato questioned, glancing at the bedside chair before sitting down in it.

"I was good at lit classes, so a bit, I guess…" I said, not quite able to look him in the eye.

"Did you do any writing?"

"As a hobby," I confessed. "I had a few stories I worked on in my free time…"

"I see," Minato said. "You're like Jiraiya-sensei, then."

I found myself pausing at that. In context of battle, comparison to a Sannin was high praise, but that was hardly the case at the moment. And with Jiraiya, there wasn't much about him I wanted to be compared to outside of a fight…

"...Why did you come?" I asked, hardly daring to speak above a whisper as I looked down at my lap. A long, pregnant pause ensued.

"I talked to Kakashi," Minato finally said, clasping his hands and leaning forward to rest his forearms on his knees. "About Kannabi Bridge. I asked him to tell me what happened again, with details."

Just the mention of Kakashi Gaiden had my heart seizing up. Sweat began to gather on my palms.

"You were right. Down to the exact words that came out of Obito's mouth, you were right," he murmured. "And after seeing these," he gestured at my papers, "I really can't doubt anymore that what you told me was true. You really _aren't _from around here."

I just looked at him, biting my lip. There were a million things to say, but my mouth was devoid of any words. I couldn't have spoken even if I wanted to.

"Why didn't you say anything?" he asked. When I looked at him I saw his eyes were shadowed. "If I had known… I wouldn't have let them go alone. I could have—I could have kept Rin from getting kidnapped, or Kakashi from losing his eye, or… or kept Obito…"

Or kept Obito alive.

"I'm sorry." I bowed my head. "You're right. I should have said something. But I was a coward, so I didn't. I… can't ask you to forgive me."

"...Why were you scared to tell me?" Minato asked after a long, heavy moment of stillness.

"Why wouldn't I be?" I shook my head bitterly, tasting regret sharply on my tongue as I pulled my knees up to my chest. "It was a selfish reason. It wasn't worth it."

"But what was it?" Minato pressed.

I looked away as tears began to well in my eyes. "I just—I didn't want you to… to think of me any differently," I mumbled shamefacedly. "I didn't want you to think of me as a stranger. I... didn't want to lose my big brother."

The silence that followed grated on my ears like nails on a chalkboard. For just a brief moment, I wondered when had I come to dread silence so much. I remembered days when I would have killed for some silence. Now I felt like I could kill to just get a bit of noise.

"Suzu," Minato sighed, tangling a hand in his hair.

I put my arms on my knees and buried my face in them. "I'm sorry," I whispered, digging my nails into my skin. "I'm sorry…"

A weight settled on the bed next to me. Minato sighed again; when I finally collected myself enough to look up at him, his face was grave.

"Yours was not the best course of action," he told me. "It's not a ninja's way to let fears or attachments keep him from doing what must be done. I know it's something easier said than done, but that's the burden we all bear. Do you realize what I'm trying to tell you?"

"Too well," I hiccuped, wiping my eyes with my sleeves. "I've been stupid. If—if I could do it over again, I would change things… I—I know better."

"You do," Minato agreed. Then he looked away, and for a long moment, he stared into his hands. Then he took a breath, shook his head, and pulled on a smile. Smacking me lightly on the back, he stood up before taking my wrist and hauling me to my feet. "Well, then, shall we go? I bet you're sick of this place by now. We should get some Ichiraku's to celebrate your discharge."

Blankly, I stared at him. "What?" I asked.

"Well, you've passed all of Hayato-sensei's psych evals, right?" Minato tilted his head quizzically. "The only reason you've been stuck here is because you needed an OK from your commanding officer, and now that I'm finally here, you're free to go. Is that not right?"

"Are you…" I trailed before making a few incoherent noises and flapping my free hand. "What, are you just—is that it? There's nothing else?"

Surely not. That _couldn't_ be it. The only thing we had talked about was poetry, for Christ's sake!

"Well, if you've learned your lesson, I don't see much point in browbeating you over it." Minato scrunched his eyebrows together. "I can tell you regret it. Besides, you've already been having a rough enough time; you don't need me making things any worse. It'd be illogical of me to try and shun you or anything like that, anyway."

"How the hell are you so casual about this?" I wrenched my hand from his grip. "Are you messing with me? The logical reaction _is _to shun me. I've been lying to you for ages! You don't even know my real _name_!"

Minato considered me for a moment, gaze betraying nothing. Then he said, "Suzu."

"What?" I agitatedly responded, feeling my hands begin shake.

"No," Minato shook his head. "Your name. It's Suzu, Misuzu Namikaze. I know it. I already told you, didn't I? No matter where you come from, it can't undo the time we've spent together, living under the same roof. Even if you weren't my sister to begin with, you are now."

"I…" I felt my arms fall limply at my sides, speechless. It took me several seconds to regain the ability to speak. "I—but—but what about… what about everything else? _Obito_?"

"I forgive you," he replied simply.

"In _two days_?" I demanded. "That's absurd!"

"What do you want me to say?" Minato asked, a bit more sharply now. "That I _don't _forgive you? That I _hate_ you? Suzu, _nothing _is solved by hate. Look at the shinobi world. You've seen what it's like out there. It's horrible. People are always seeking revenge, holding grudges, feuding, doing whatever they can to make it worse, and hate is what drives that machine. I've always told myself I'd never be a part of it, and if I can't even let what you've done go, what does that say about me? I've been wronged before and I'll be wronged again, and there's nothing that can change that, hatred least of all."

Minato let out a long breath before sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose. "Sorry," he apologized. "I lost my temper. Look, you've not done the best, but it's alright. I've not always done what I should have, either. No one has been perfect. But we need to get along, don't we? There are enough people who have it out for us anyway. We should be able rely on one another for support—there's no room for this sort of division."

Do you know how, every now and then, you come to a realization? The kind that sort just flies at you out of nowhere and slaps you in the face with a rubber chicken, leaving you reeling? At that moment, I took a hen to the head.

Minato was waging the constant war against hate. The one that Nagato had confronted Naruto with during the series, the problem of pain, Jiraiya's big question—how to break the cycle. So many lives were destroyed by it all the time, and Minato was trying to keep free of that. He was _refusing _to hate, no matter what the circumstances. Right now, in this room, at this moment, he was trying to change what it meant to be a shinobi, if only for himself.

And by doing that, in a way, he was trying to change the world.

"You're right," I said softly, putting a hand on my head and shaking it. How could I not have realized? And who was I to try and get in his way? "I… I should remember that. Thank you..." I swallowed and shifted my weight nervously before quietly adding, "niichan."

Minato's face softened immensely. He laid a hand on my shoulder.

"Ichiraku's it is, then?" he smiled gently. Then, humorously, he tacked on, "You've gone weeks without ramen. I don't know how you've managed to hold out for so long."

At that, I laughed. For the first time in what seemed like years, I laughed, long, loud, and hearty, like I'd never laughed before.

And then, side by side, we left the room, leaving pages scribbled red behind on the bed.

* * *

Before they left, the two ninja at the opposite end of the stall looked pointedly at us and exchanged glances. I frowned over my bowl of shio ramen as they shared a whispered conversation before staring again, nodding, and getting up to leave.

"That's the third time that's happened," I noted, turning to look at Minato, who also seemed puzzled. "What's going on?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "I've been swamped the past few days, so I haven't had time to keep up with the village news. At first I thought they were just gawking because I'm the new Hokage, but they're definitely been looking at you two as well." He glanced at Kakashi. "Kakashi, do you know what it is?"

As luck would have had it, Kakashi had been coming up to visit me just as we were leaving the hospital. Naturally, he was invited to ramen as well, and the three of us had gone together to get some noodles. Ever since we'd arrived here and begun eating, though, several people had rather conspicuously been oggling at us, like we were some rare breed of monkey newly arrived at a zoo.

Kakashi blinked before reaching into his belt pouch and pulling out a thin volume; he presented it to his teacher with a shrug.

"A Bingo Book?" Minato tilted his head. "You know, now that I think about it, the Information Sector _did _say they were going to release an updated copy with all of the new notables from the war."

"This one's an international version, taken from outside the village," Kakashi said as he shook his head. He flipped the book open to Minato's entry, which took up a solid two pages; at the top, there was a rough colored sketch of the infamous Yellow Flash. Which made sense, considering that cameras in this universe were clunky and that it would be next to impossible to get a mugshot of him at work in the field. Neverminding he never stayed in one place long enough to even touch, if you were gathering information for the enemy you'd probably be dead before you could lift your finger to snap the picture.

"I've had an entry in the Book for quite a while," Minato pointed out. "I don't see how this is cause for the sudden strange behavior we're experiencing."

"Well," Kakashi said, flipping the page, "it's not. This is."

Right after Minato's entry were two smaller ones, side by side on the next pages. On the right was tiny portrait of a silver-headed teen with gravity-defying hair; the left was a blond girl sporting a low side ponytail over the right shoulder.

"We've got Bingo Book entries?" I gasped, lunging over Minato's lap and grabbing for it, causing him to hurriedly snatch up his bowl in order to prevent spillage. Kakashi handed his book over with a shrug, evidently having already studied said entries. "No way!"

"'Known associates of the Yellow Flash,'" Minato read aloud, blinking at the text as he setting his food back down. "'Proceed with caution if spotted; may indicate his presence. Kakashi of the Sharingan and Konoha's Bloody Threads.' Well, look at that… they broke alphabetical order to make us a trio."

"Konoha's Bloody Threads?" I repeated, nearly shoving my nose into the paper to get a better look. I was dumbstruck at the appellation listed at the top of my page.

"Kakashi's been out in the field much longer than you, so our enemies have had more time to figure out his name because they've heard more of our verbal communications," Minato explained, completely misplacing the cause of my incredulity. "I think you've only made one really major appearance, so they probably just decided to identify you by your wire jutsu."

"Hardly anyone escaped from the base on the border that we attacked, so whoever managed to report your abilities probably didn't have the time to catch your name," Kakashi put in helpfully. "If you're lucky, not much else will get out. It's dangerous to have your techniques on display like that for the whole world… I'll have to be more careful in the future."

"Well, Copy Ninja Kakashi," Minato put in a bit dryly, "I think you'll be okay. Apparently you've copied over a thousand jutsu, but they haven't taken the time to list them all."

"Sensei," Kakashi whined. Dare I say it, he almost sounded a bit _childish_—which, I suppose, was a testament to the fact that he'd been learning under Minato since he was five. "You know that's not what I mean. I _mean _that when people look at my page and see that I'm claimed to have copied a thousand jutsu, they'll know I'm a ninjutsu specialist and deploy countermeasures."

"Well then, now you're certainly in trouble," Minato teased. "It's a shame you don't have other skillsets to rely on, like taijutsu or genjutsu…"

"_Sensei!_ I'm perfectly capable at using those, too—"

As the two beside me began to bicker lightly, I continued to stare, shocked, at my very own entry in a Bingo Book. A _Bingo Book_. Good Lord, not even in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined being in one of these. I mean, there was obviously a definite factor of famous-by-association going on here, but _damn_. It was an international one, too. How in the world had this happened? I could hardly think of myself as dangerous. Not when I was surrounded by people like an S-rank war hero _Kage _and his teenaged jounin apprentice, who was probably at an A-rank himself now that he had a perfected, lightning-fast, one-hit-kill assassination technique at his disposal.

Thinking of ranks, I quickly scanned the text to see what I was classified as. Then I had a heart attack.

"They've listed me as a high B-rank," I cried, horrified. "I'm only a chuunin! What am I going to do if someone sees this and expects me to be way more dangerous than I actually am? I'm going to get _destroyed_!"

"Well, to be fair to you, you did manage to take down a high number of ninja in your first notable battle," Kakashi pointed out, withdrawing from his argument with Minato to throw me a side glance. "And considering they know we're associated with Minato-sensei, who also became well-known after defeating a large number of enemies at once, they probably thought you've been studying his method. Likely they assumed that was an attempt at another Yellow Flash, so they were generous in their ranking."

"Another Yellow Flash?" I think I must have paled a hundred different shades of white. That was _not _a name I wanted to be carrying—unlike Minato, who could defend himself if his reputation ever brought him trouble, I was just a kid barely managing to scrape by in one piece. Quite frankly, I had only made it this far thanks to my watchful teammates... and, of course, dumb luck.

"It's a compliment to your fighting ability, though, isn't it?" Kakashi pointed out. "Even if they _are_ mistaken."

..._Wow_, okay, no need to say it like a prick. I knew there was no way I could ever possibly stand in comparison to Minato, but he didn't have to say it like _that_. Would it kill this kid to have a bit of sensitivity?

"Probably, if sensitivity is what you call deluding yourself," Kakashi replied bluntly. I paused a moment, confused, before realizing I'd spoken aloud and slapping a hand on my face. God, why did my mouth always operate without my permission? "If you went into battle while thinking yourself on par with someone like Minato-sensei, you'd be guaranteed to meet an early end."

"Now, now, Kakashi," Minato chided, holding up a hand. "I know you're only trying to be practical, but it really wouldn't hurt you to have a bit more tact. Three quarters of every political gaffe that has ever happened could have been avoided with more thoughtful word choice, you know; a bit of sensitivity might actually get you quite far in life."

And wouldn't he know? I took a moment to appreciate that, for all of his chivalry, Minato was quite the smooth-talker. He had gotten a lot done—and secured no small number of connections and other assorted allies—just by speaking nicely; it was one of the reasons people found him so likeable. It was obvious that ability had done him well—after all, here he is now, standing at the top of the village.

"...Yes, sensei," Kakashi sighed after a moment, likely having followed a similar train of thought. In reality, I wasn't too worried about him—though he would probably never achieve Minato's level of friendliness, I knew for a fact that later on he would be just fine with speaking politely if the situation called for it. Twenty-six-year-old Kakashi would be much more competent with the rules of social interaction, even if he didn't care much for them. Too bad he always dispensed with them completely whenever he spoke to his friends.

Still… shaking my head and saving those thoughts for later, I turned my gaze back to the Bingo Book. The blond girl in the sketch gazed back with her roughly-made face and tiny eyes, drawn thin and impersonal. Quietly, I wondered about who had been the one to give my information. Was he young? Old? Had I injured him? Did he have any siblings? Did I _kill_ any of his siblings?

Did he... _hate_ me?

"We've got Bingo Book entries," I said again, slowly. This time, neither Minato nor Kakashi made a reply. This time, we could all hear the real meaning of those words.

I stared at the book a little longer; then I quietly shut it again and passed it back to Kakashi. It was returned to his belt pouch without another word.

* * *

Though Kakashi left to go home straight after Ichiraku's—it had been his day off and he didn't have anything else to do, apparently—Minato and I spent the rest of the late afternoon hesitantly reforging our direly drifted relationship over what were once our typical bonding activities—looking at new equipment, dropping by to say hello to his favorite Academy teachers, talking to the fat lady at the end of the market road who liked to give us free apricots. Something in the back of my mind was telling me to be guilty for taking up the now-Hokage's very precious free time, but I couldn't bring myself to because, oh, I hadn't realized I'd missed hanging out with Minato this much. I was just too happy to care. It didn't matter that he was now probably the busiest man in the village—I just wanted to spend time with him again.

Eventually, though, the day had to come to a close. Right as the evening sun began to dip below the horizon, we arrived back at the Namikaze compound. Minato passed a dinner at the House, claiming that it was Kushina's turn to cook and that he couldn't bear to miss out on it.

"Well, then…" I shifted a bit, intertwining my fingers behind my back as I stood at the edge of the porch. "I guess I'll see you tomorrow, then?"

Minato smiled up at me from his spot at the bottom of the stairs. "Yeah," he agreed, holding up a hand in farewell, half-turned to leave. "Come by the Tower and we'll talk. I'll be busy sorting out some of my duties in the morning, but I'll probably be free in the afternoon."

"Alright," I murmured. Then, hesitatingly, I said, "Um, niichan…"

"Hm?" Minato tilted his head, facing back around.

"Uh, um, uh," I floundered a moment, struggling to find my words. "I—um, well… thank you, and, uh, um… _byeIloveyougoodnight._"

Flame-faced, I immediately dashed inside before spinning about and yanking the door shut. There was a brief stunned silence on the other side.

And then, after a long, long moment, a chuckle.

"I love you too," my big brother called back.

* * *

**A/N: Disclaimer: Men who like poetry are totally full of cool beans. Don't let Kushina get you down, boys. You know where it's at.**

**Anyway, speedier update to make up for that agonizing month-long wait. Thank you, by the way, to everyone who reviewed the last chapter! I would have loved to hear more thoughts and reactions, though. I wasn't sure what you all made of it.**

**Not much else to say, really. Hope you enjoyed the squishy fluffy feels, though.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	16. Age 12: Sakuya: Part 1

**Published: 12/20/2014**

**Edited: 1/9/2015**

* * *

**Age 12: Part 3**

"Did _you kick his ass, Auntie?"_

"_Of course I did. Minato may be an excellent shinobi, but that hardly served as an excuse. Kushina was pregnant, for goodness' sake! Maybe common-law marriage was enough for him, but she deserved a proper ceremony. It's the least he could have done."_

* * *

"...so I ended up telling him everything. In the end it turned all out well, though… oh, but do you know what's funny? Because of all the things I know now, my security clearance has jumped up all the way to rank S. And I'm not even a jounin," I laughed quietly.

During the series, there had been numerous scenes of Kakashi standing over graves and monologuing into the air. Honestly, I don't think I ever really appreciated what he was doing, and thus I never thought I'd ever find myself doing the same. But lo and behold, here I was, sitting in the General Forces' cemetery and talking to Yoshiya Miyazawa's headstone. Luckily, the entire area was empty—I made sure to check thoroughly before I started on the really sensitive information, in addition to keeping my chakra sense on as high an alert as possible.

"I wonder what you'd say if you could see me now." I propped my chin up with my hand. "S-rank security clearance, a place in the Bingo Book, known murderer of a nearly a hundred Iwa ninja… I don't think I even recognize myself. I can't believe it's only been three years… I guess that goes to show how much people change."

I cast my eyes up, past the red and orange trees and to the sky. Even though it was already winter, the trees hadn't become barren. As a fact, none of the trees surrounding Konoha lost their leaves—they only changed colors during the cold months. Likely it had to do with the fact that they were Hashirama trees, and that the Shodaime had known that seasonally losing all all of our leaves each year would probably not end well for a village hidden in, well, leaves.

"...Yeah, people change a lot," I muttered, bringing my gaze back down to the ground. When I had gotten here, there had already been flowers, but I knew for a fact Yoshiya's father had been the one to bring them. I had seen him leaving just as I'd arrived. "Does… does _he _ever visit you at all? Because… well, he never visits me. It's been nearly a year now.

"I always kind of thought that maybe we'd sort it out after we'd cooled down," I mumbled, picking at the grass. "The first month, just the thought of him made me want to flip a table over, and the second and third weren't really much better… but after a while I started wondering when we could see each other again. Or really, when he'd come see me. I can't find him, since he's in ANBU. Even if I have S-rank clearance now, I don't have the authority to be pulling info about people outside the jurisdiction of the General Forces…" I let out a frustrated breath. "We haven't said a word to each other since."

Aloud, I did not say it. But if Yoshiya had been here with me, I knew he would have been able to tell just by looking at me.

I missed Akihiko.

The whole debacle with Minato had taught me many things. One was that ninjas could not be cowards. Another was that sometimes, in some cases, honesty really _was _the best policy. Or that it paid to trust your friends and family more. Or that you should never assume you know everything about a situation.

And in any case, those were hard-learned lessons. But what might have been one of the hardest of them all had been this: never stake your emotional health on one person, because when things get rough with that person, you'll find yourself imploding with all of your undivulged struggles.

There had been moments when I'd thought I'd suffocate under the unbearable weight on my chest. Normally, I'd go cry it out to my big brother, but that hadn't been an option. Itsuki had not been viable either—neverminding the less than ideal circumstances of our last encounter—because I knew it really was not my place to be making an already mentally and emotionally stressed guy shoulder my ridiculous problems. Maybe when I'd been a kid, it'd been alright to confide in him, but now that I was getting into the issues that had put _him _out of the service, it was a different story. What I had needed, I'd realized pretty quickly, was a peer. A friend to talk with.

What I had needed was the best friend I no longer had.

"Was there anything I could have done?" I muttered, leaning back and putting a hand over my eyes. "I know I shouldn't have hit him back, but even if I'd controlled myself, it wouldn't have solved the problem… What do you think? Was there something I should have done to keep it from ending up this way?"

I shut my mouth and listened, but as always, there was only silence. Yoshiya wasn't really here, after all. He couldn't give me advice… A long sigh escaped my lips. No, I couldn't ask Yoshiya for help. I'd never speak to him again in this life. I felt my heart sink, just a bit.

"I know it's not good to look back a lot," I whispered into the still graveyard air, lifting my fingers and watching condensation from my breath rise, "but sometimes I really miss the old days, Yoshiya."

* * *

"You look like an icicle," Minato observed when I ducked in through his office window, blowing on my numb fingers. "Is is really that bad out there?"

Cold weather was something a Leaf Village citizen tended not to be well equipped for. Being used to the temperate Fire Country climate, most people in this area only wore thin cotton clothes, often without sleeves, and possessed nothing much heavier than a light windbreaker. Though ninjas on principle tended to wear more layers, if only to provide more padding to hide weapons in, they generally were not an exception; even for me (and I knew quite well the bite of a proper winter wind—snowstorms were brutal where I had grown up) the seasonal outfit change had consisted only of a hooded scarf and a long-sleeved shirt. Though cold weather gear was available for shinobi who needed it for overseas missions, probably only about 20% of our ninja population actually owned said gear.

"No, I was just outside for a while." I shook my head, sticking my hands into my armpits. "I should've gone in earlier, but I didn't, so…"

"I see." Minato straightened a few papers before fixing me with a solemn look. "I assume you're here to talk about _that _matter again?"

"Unfortunately," I sighed. Minato just put a hand down on the array inked out on the surface of his desk in reply, activating the privacy seals fixed around the room.

"I know we're agreed that the Dead Demon Consuming Seal is definitely out," I began after he gave me the okay signal, "and I know you and Kushina-san have been working on an alternative. But if it does come down to a confrontation and you have to talk, I really want to be able to be there to—"

"I told you, you're not going to be anywhere but in the shelters with with others," Minato interrupted, already knowing exactly what I was about to say. We'd spent a few months arguing over it now. "It's not like I'm singling you out or anything. Kakashi will be there too. And hopefully, if everything goes right, the Kyuubi won't escape at all."

"I wouldn't count on it," I mumbled at that. "I know it's kind of hard to imagine, but Madara… he's screwed Obito up pretty badly. He's going to do whatever it takes."

"If we go into this operation with that kind of mindset, then it's bound to happen," Minato retorted. "Anyway, I've said it before, and I'll say it again—_no. _Obito is my student and my responsibility, so I'll handle it. It's bad enough we're going to be putting Rin at risk with this gambit, especially with the state she's in now—" here his eyes darted down and to the left a bit, gaze dark, "—and I don't need to add worrying about you into the mix. We just need to hope finding out she isn't dead will be enough to sway him."

"But niichan," I began, taking a deep breath and preparing to pull out the best rhetoric I could produce, "we'll stand a much better chance if I'm there to tell him about how Madara was the one who tried to kill Rin—"

But Minato thrust out a hand, cutting me off with his palm open and vertical in the universal sign for _stop_. I paused with my mouth open before shutting it with a disgruntled click.

"You're not going to convince me," he said plainly, eyes narrowing. "It's my prerogative as Hokage to determine how to deal with threats to the village, and this is how we're doing it. You've told me everything I've needed to know, all the little details too, and that was your role. Now you have to step back and let me do my job. End of story."

Souring, I crossed my arms and glared. "You never used to pull rank on us, even when you were promoted to jounin," I accused with a scowl. "Has being Hokage gotten to your head?"

Of course, I knew it hadn't. This was Minato, after all. He wasn't nearly so petty as that.

"Everything is proceeding as scheduled. Jiraiya-sensei will be arriving soon," Minato went on, primly ignoring my jab. "When he gets here we'll start making more progress. Now that Kushina's actually pregnant and showing, she's been reluctant to work on a seal to make her son into a Jinchuuriki… the work's slowed down a bit. The only way I've convinced her to keep going is by telling her that it's not a hundred percent chance we'll have to use it."

"No, just a ninety-nine point eight," I muttered. Minato regarded me with a decidedly unamused expression. "_What?_ Your son was involved up to his eyeballs with the Tailed Beasts. There are so many factors pushing him and the Kyuubi together it's not even funny."

"I refuse to let my son take on this burden unless it's absolutely necessary," Minato said sharply. "I'm not just going to decide it's his fate and resign myself to it."

Well, when he said it like _that_… I grimaced and rubbed my neck.

"You're right," I sighed after a moment. "Maybe I am just being too pessimistic… and I don't want Kushina-san to suffer through an extraction, either. Even if she survived during the story, that kind of thing usually kills a person… it's pretty hideous."

"Then that's another reason why our first plan of action can't fail," Minato pointed out. "And _another _to make sure you do as you're told and evacuate the civilians along with your agemates."

"_Minato_—" I bristled.

"I don't care that you have foreknowledge or that you claim you're older than I am," Minato declared, making note of my lack of honorific title. "It wouldn't matter even if you were twenty or thirty or forty years old when you came here. The fact is I have been a shinobi for _far _longer and that my experience in these matters trumps yours. I'm sorry, Suzu, but _no_."

"Ugh!" I threw my arms up. "I'm going to steal the Hiraishin formula and stalk you with it wherever you go," I threatened. "Watch me. I'll be popping in and out every ten seconds—you won't be rid of me."

"Good luck with that," was the snorted response. Ever since taking office, I'd noticed, Minato's face had begun to display an almost permanent sardonic dryness when he was irritated. "There's a reason Hiraishin is a kinjutsu, you know. Unless you've personalized the seal like I have, the chakra taxation would kill you outright."

Undeterred, I put my hands on my hips. "We're going to talk about this again," I vowed.

Minato just sighed and tugged on one of his hair spikes.

"I don't doubt it," he muttered. "Now, did you have any other business here? Or did you just come to pick a fight?"

"Ha ha," I said flatly. "No, I didn't. I just wanted to see if I could convince you this time."

"Well, that's not surprising," my cousin noted. "You've broken your record—a whole two weeks without bringing it up. I suppose it was nice while it lasted."

"You know, you've gotten a lot meaner since you became Hokage," I said in reply, squinting at him a bit. "Does this have to do with that thing you were arguing with Auntie about—?"

"Hey," Minato said abruptly, sitting up straight and picking up a scroll from the pile at the corner of his desk. "I have a mission for you. Come here."

"...You're totally just trying to get rid of me. You just don't want to tell me she kicked your ass."

"Hush," he ordered, giving me a resentful look. I rolled my eyes and stepped up to his desk; he handed me the scroll. "Here. Take Kakashi with you. Partner mission, joint authority."

"What kind of mission does it have to be for you to not want Kakashi in charge?" I wondered, hefting the thing and noting it was surprisingly heavy for a mission briefing scroll.

"This arrangement is for both of your sakes," Minato explained. "You've never operated without a commander despite the fact that you're a chuunin. You need to gain experience in taking missions without an absolute authority to guide you."

"Hey, that's not true," I protested. "Remember the jounin who nominated me? I was able to organize a rescue mission when she had been kidnapped!"

"And as soon as she was free she was in charge again," Minato replied patiently. "Besides, in that case, there was no question in what your superior would have wanted your course of action to be. You need to learn how to deal with more ambiguous situations."

"Are you expecting this to be a difficult assignment?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Every mission in post-war climate has the potential to be difficult," was the cryptic response. "It all depends on you as a person…"

Not sure how to respond to that, I just put a hand on my neck. Minato took a moment of silence before quietly dismissing me, turning his swivel chair to stare out the window.

* * *

Konoha's messenger birds were reserved for use by jounin and the upper brass of the village's military, as their communications had priority. Chuunin, who made up the bulk of the forces, usually had to make do with couriers—or summons if they had them—to communicate amongst themselves. Luckily for me, though, Kakashi was a jounin, and that meant I had the authority to put one out, if it was for the sake of contacting him.

"Eh, Suzu-san," the ninja on duty said with surprise. He was a boy my age, wearing a bandanna and a shirt with a collar that went all the way up to his chin.

"...Izumo?" I blinked after a moment of confusion. Izumo the gatekeeper guy? I hadn't thought to see him here, keeping the hawks.

"Hey, you remembered," he exclaimed with a grin. "We were only in the same homeroom for one year. I didn't think you would."

...Er, had I ever been in a homeroom with Izumo? Now that I thought about it we probably were about the same age, but I hadn't really noticed him at the Academy at all…

"...Well, same to you," I replied after a moment, letting him assume that I hadn't been completely unaware of his existence. "You remembered me."

"Kind of hard to forget you, actually," Izumo pointed out. "'Specially now that you're kind of famous. I mean, even before Yondaime-sama became the Hokage, a lot of people from our class were impressed when they learned that you were working on a team with a bunch of senpai. Oh! Aside from your own accomplishments, I mean."

Awkwardly, I shifted my weight and fiddled with the ends of my ponytail—I had been doing that a lot lately, now that it was long enough to come down to my waist—and frowned. I suppose it would have been silly to assume that as a close associate of the now-Hokage that I would manage to stay unknown to the village, but the strange courtesy and esteem people had been addressing me with lately was starting to really make me feel weird.

"It… it's not that big a deal," I uncomfortably demured. "Anyways, um, can I…?"

"Oh, excuse me." Izumo straightened and made an apologetic motion. "Of course. How can I help you, Suzu-san?"

"Can you put out a bird for Kakashi Hatake?" I requested, glad get off the subject. "Um, let's see, he lives at the end of the southern sector… just tell him to go the marketplace, please, since it's a good halfway point."

"Understood." Izumo nodded and turned to one of the perches behind him. As one of the hawks hopped onto his arm, he pulled out a scroll from the _ha _section of the ninja directory and looked up Kakashi's call signal; after that, he glanced at a board on the wall, where _location flight patterns _was written in bold at the top. Then he tapped the bird's beak twice, then once, then three times, then four, then twice again… When he was done, he went to the window and pushed it open with one hand. The bird beat its gigantic wings took off into the air.

"Your summons has been processed," Izumo announced, shutting the window and dusting his hands off. "Have a nice day."

"Thank you," I said gratefully, sliding open a window myself and hopping onto the sill. Izumo just smiled and waved.

I leapt from the comm tower down to the Jounin Lounge's rooftop, taking a brief moment to appreciate the thrill of a fall from great heights. Even though I did it often, the fact that I was able to land on my feet without shattering my legs made me take a moment to appreciate the catch-all phlebotinum that was chakra. Not only did it let us magically throw about the elements and defy gravity (saying nothing of giving the power to _walk on water_) it managed to disperse enough force to make otherwise lethal falls survivable. Just reinforcing your bones and muscles with it was enough to take your weight times whatever the gravitational constant was—on Earth, that meant falling an extra _32.2 feet_ every second—and render it totally irrelevant. Which was, I guessed when I thought about it, also defying gravity. Just in a different way from tree climbing. Hm, did that explain why ninjas could walk up walls without having to massively strain their muscles in order to stay perpendicular? Did the use of chakra just exert some sort of gravity-negating field?

I was still pondering it when I touched down in the marketplace center. A cursory glance with both eyes and chakra sense allowed me to conclude that Kakashi had not yet arrived, so I looked around, found a wall to lean on, and waited.

And then, just because the universe enjoyed screwing with my health, had a heart attack at the sight of one Itsuki Mikawaya standing across the street.

I quickly thanked God that he was facing the other direction and dove behind some restaurant's _Today's Special _sign. Only after hiding my giveaway blonde hair under my scarf and yanking down my hood to cover my face—that was the advantage of ninja clothes, hoods were _always _deep enough to hide your face—did I _very slowly_ peek my head out to look at him.

Wrapped in a thick winter haori, he was inspecting a cart full of crates, hands folded into his sleeves to guard against the cold. After a moment of conversation with the cart's owner, he pulled out a wad of ryo before claiming what evidently was a new shipment of fruit. The man unloaded before leaving Itsuki to spend several minutes padding back forth in and out of the store, moving one crate at a time. It was slow going.

"...What are you doing?"

"Kakashi!" I jerked my head up. Sure enough, Kakashi was standing over me, dressed exactly as he always was. "...You're not even wearing sleeves. Your arm warmers can't be _that _good."

"I'm fine," he dismissed. "More importantly, why are you crouching behind an advertisement for oden?"

"Oden?" I blinked before briefly turning the sign around and tilting my head. "Huh. Hey, can we grab some of this before we leave?"

"...I don't see why not," Kakashi said after a brief pause, shrugging. "So we do have a mission, then?"

"Yeah," I confirmed. "I haven't opened the scroll yet, though. Oh, but niichan said that it's a joint-authority partner assignment."

"I see," Kakashi murmured. Then he gave me an exasperated look. "Can you please come out from there? You look ridiculous."

"I can't," I protested, suddenly remembering myself and ducking back behind the sign. Luckily, Itsuki was still moving his crates. Damn it, why hadn't I realized I'd stopped in front of his shop? Stupid!

"Did you steal something?" Kakashi frowned at me, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"What? No!" I scowled up at him. "If I'd stolen something, do you really think I would have stopped here? I wouldn't even be _in _the marketplace."

"Then what are you doing?" Kakashi shook his head. "Actually, you know what? Nevermind. I don't need to know. Let's just go inside and see what the mission is."

"Gladly," I muttered, eyeing Itsuki. As soon as his back was turned again, I jumped behind Kakashi—who was thankfully a head and a half taller than me—and used him as a hiding spot, fisting my hands in the back of his shirt and pulling him with me as I shuffled backwards into the store.

"You do realize by acting like this you're being ten times more conspicuous than you would be if you'd just walked normally?" Kakashi pointed out, exasperated, as the surrounding people stopped to send us strange looks.

"...I know that," I said after a brief moment's pause. "This is just a, um, refuge in audacity technique."

"Moron," Kakashi muttered under his breath, putting a hand on my forehead and pushing me out of his personal bubble. I huffed and put a hand on my hip before whirling around and looking for a table to sit at.

Kakashi did not opt to get anything, so I was left to eat the oden on my own. Since my mouth would be full, I passed the scroll to him to read.

"Estimated duration is four to six weeks," he declared after scanning it. "Location is a mining village at the Kusa-Iwa border. The village chief suspects someone is illegally extracting ore from the mines and has requested a team from Konoha to investigate and, if necessary, expel the thieves. Due to its proximity with Iwa territory, it's ranked as a B."

For a jounin and chuunin, that was not unreasonable at all. Most jounin, depending on the scope of the mission, could go on such an assignment completely alone and come out no worse for the wear. For someone of Kakashi's caliber, that was doubly so, and since I would be along, we were well within our parameters. Four to six weeks was also a relatively short time frame for an out-of-country assignment. We would be home well before October 10th.

Minato probably just wanted me out of his hair while he was ironing out the last bits of the Kyuubi attack countermeasures. The main goal was to catch Obito before he could get to Kushina and lure him to Rin's location, but it all depended on whether he would stop to pursue Minato before trying for the Kyuubi. I honestly couldn't see that working, but it was what it was. And Minato _was _trying to put together an alternate sealing technique that he wouldn't have to commit suicide to use, so there really wasn't much I could do at this point. Hopefully he and Jiraiya would get it sorted while I was gone. Maybe it would be good for me to be out of the village after all.

"Want some?" I asked of Kakashi, pushing my bowl towards him. He stared at it for a moment before glancing up at me, looking left and right, and then finally shrugging and reaching for a pair of chopsticks. Watching intently as he snapped them in half and rubbed off the splinters, I was totally taken off guard when he suddenly snapped his fingers in my face. I flinched.

"What was that for?" I demanded. Then I looked down and saw that my remaining oden was gone. "Hey… _hey_…"

"You offered," Kakashi pointed out. He sounded distinctly like he was chewing.

"How the hell did you eat it that quickly?!" I screeched, smacking my palm on the table. "That's so _unfair! _I didn't even have a chance to see the damned bridge of your nose!"

"Trying to use food to see under my mask is the oldest trick in the book," Kakashi replied. "You're right. You _didn't_ have a chance."

Speechless, I sat back in my chair and stared at the empty bowl. Kakashi got up smugly and turned to the door.

"Meet you at the gate in twenty," he said, sounding cheered. "Ja."

As he sauntered out, hands in his pockets once more, I blinked. For a moment, I was hit with a disorientingly strong wave of deja vu.

Then I found myself trying not to grin. He had really been improving lately, hadn't he?

"You sly bastard," I murmured, holding in a laugh.

* * *

**A/N: Zap! Another super fast one. Christmas break special. Lighter chapter today, just as a cooldown from the last ones—it's more for me than for you guys, anyway. But yeah, we're taking a bit of a detour before the Kyuubi attack. I don't think I can bring myself to author so many insanely difficult scenes in a row, so forgive me if I take a breather.**

**Also, shameless plug is shameless: Glory now has an entry on the TVTropes Naruto fanfics For Want of a Nail page! If you're feeling up to it, want to pop over and show it some love? Maybe figure out how to give the poor thing a review button? I'd greatly appreciate it. Now that I'm finally hitting my stride with the story, it'd be great if you guys could help spread it around.**

**(Btw: It's kind of been my secret wish for a long time now for someone to try and diagnose my writing with tropes. I'm pretty sure I drop at least one a chapter verbatim, so if you could be my wish-fulfilling machine, internet, please, by all means. My body is ready.)**

**I'm not sure if there'll be another chapter between now and the twenty-fifth, so I'll just wish you all a Merry Christmas now!**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	17. Age 12: Sakuya: Part 2

**Published: 12/25/2014**

* * *

**Age 12: Part 4**

"_Wow, neechan, this was your first real infiltration job? I think you did awesome."_

"_Why, thank you. I have to admit I did have quite a bit of fun."_

"_I guess that's why you went on to specialize in it, huh? Not common for kids from a war generation, but then again, you're hardly a suitable example of a standard. Still, most of your kind end up being destructive and heavy-hitting front-liners. The majority of your experience at that point was with open combat, after all."_

"_I think there's a really pleasing finesse to undercover work, though. And if you do it right, no one who doesn't need to get hurt will."_

"_Ha… that's just like you to say, Suzu."_

* * *

The advantage of having a fuuinjutsu master for a brother was, after so much exposure to seals, osmosis of knowledge. Neverminding the fact that he had steadily been teaching me how to tweak the touch seals for my wire jutsu—altering things like the direction and force of the burst or the number of wires used—over the past few years, I had managed to pick up three different kinds of storage scroll. There was the standard one, for use on things like weapons or clothes, which could get very bulky on their own; then there was the one for foods, perishable or otherwise; and then there was the one for storing scrolls inside scrolls.

Generally, when you tried to seal a scroll already containing something in another scroll, the larger scroll would have to be proportional to the amount of matter contained in the first one. This being fairly useless, most ninja didn't bother. Minato, though, clever space-time ninjutsu master he was, had showed me a pair of seals not unlike to the ones I used for the Strings of Fate jutsu. If you sealed all of the scrolls containing your extra crap into one gigantic scroll, you could connect that gigantic scroll to a smaller one thin enough to carry in your belt pouch. The result? Instant easy hammerspace. Really, it was no wonder that Minato was so crazy-prepared for everything. If he made a point of inventing these kinds of seals and bringing them around in his pocket, how could he not be?

Of course, I knew better than to put all of my eggs into one basket. I carried all of my essential gear in individual scrolls and packed them separately into a travel bag. I also kept some supplies unsealed for quick access. It wouldn't do to be caught fumbling with a seal if you needed some extra kunai in the heat of battle, after all.

"I'm going to be gone for at least a month," I proclaimed as I made my way down the stairs, hefting my pack and adjusting my clothes for a long sustained run. The younger kids were at the Academy and a good portion of the rest were out training or on their own missions, so it was really only Auntie Reiko, Uncle Souhei, and five napping infants and toddlers left.

When I caught sight of my aunt and uncle quietly leaning against each other on the couch, though, their fingers linked together, I immediately felt bad for interrupting what had evidently been a private moment. I knew they didn't get much time to themselves, either. But instead of getting angry, they just looked up and sent me identical smiles, fondness plain on their faces.

"Take care," Auntie Reiko said, waving her free hand. "Is Kakashi-kun going with you?"

"Yeah," I confirmed. "It's joint authority, though. Niichan said I need to learn how to operate without a commander." I made a face.

"He's right," Uncle Souhei pointed out. "Where are you going?"

"A mining village on the Iwa-Kusa border."

"Be careful," my parent figures both immediately cautioned. They glanced at each other before Uncle Souhei said, "Neither you nor Kakashi will be regarded fondly in Earth Country. Keep an eye out for people with grudges."

"Always," I promised, making for the door. "I'll see you later. Love you," I added thoughtfully. Just in case.

"And we love you," Auntie Reiko replied.

I smiled over my shoulder before setting off. Wristwatches weren't a thing here, so I took a moment to mentally calculate how much time had passed before deciding that I had probably better shunshin to be safe. Hopping onto a nearby roof, I turned in the direction of Konoha's main gate before gathering my chakra and jumping.

If there was a way to describe the Body Flicker Technique, I'd probably call it horizontal freefall. In a way, it was almost like slingshotting yourself with chakra, with the amount needed being proportional to the distance travelled while also accounting for any terrain in between. It was good for travel, but not suited for combat—because it involved moving at such high speeds, its use constituted almost total sensory blindness to the environment, which was not the best state to be in if someone was trying to kill you.

I touched down mostly undisturbed, though I could tell my bangs had peeled back a bit. If you were skilled, you could do a shunshin without stirring a hair on your head, but I wasn't quite that good yet. Kakashi, though—who appeared next to me about a minute later—seemed to be a different story, because once he arrived he looked like he'd been standing there since the dawn of time. Privately, I wondered how it was possible to attain such powers of aloofness.

"Everything taken care of?" I asked. "Got someone to water your plants? I know I don't need to ask about your fridge."

The one time I had been invited to Kakashi's apartment, it had been for dinner. Since he was usually so cool-headed, it had been pretty funny to see how red he turned when we cracked open the refrigerator and found only a half-molded can of olives.

"You don't need to be fussing over me like I'm a child," Kakashi grumbled, crossing his arms. "...I left Akino in charge. He knows how to use a watering can."

Was that implying that the others _didn't_? I could only imagine what dogs would think a watering can _was_ for, then, if not plants…

"You make your ninken house-sit while you're away?" I snorted, opting not to share that thought. "What are you going to do if you need him?"

"I'll summon the others first," Kakashi replied, just a tad defensively. "And even if I do need him, when they return they'll just end up in the Inuzuka kennels. He can walk back to my apartment and let himself in if it comes to that."

I resisted the urge to slap a hand on my face. "Next time, just tell me," I advised instead, giving him a dry look. "I have an army of minions willing to obey my every command for just a few pieces of candy. Any of my younger cousins would have been glad to help out."

"I don't want strangers alone in my house," was the succinct reply. I sighed, but decided that that was probably fair. Just because he knew me didn't mean he knew my family, after all.

"Maybe we should get going," I murmured after a moment of silence. "Obviously we're heading northwest, but I didn't have the scroll… can I see the map location?"

To be honest, I was absolute crap at orienteering. I could probably get lost in my own backyard if I tried hard enough. That being so, I usually left navigation to the person in charge; unfortunately, I was given this mission on the premise of learning to be independent of a commander, so I had to at least try.

Kakashi looked decidedly skeptical when he handed me our instructions. That was probably justified, though, because he had already experienced firsthand my skill at running in circles. Unfortunately, I couldn't say I didn't fulfill his expectations; after several minutes of staring at the map, looking around, and biting my lip, I had to hang my head in defeat.

"Maybe you should lead," I muttered dejectedly, passing it back to him. Kakashi just sighed.

* * *

Four days of travel later, we were about an hour away from our destination when Kakashi suddenly said, "Stop."

"What is it?" I asked, skidding to a halt on a long tree branch and turning to face him. "I don't sense anyone nearby, if you're worried."

"That's good," Kakashi replied, looking pleased, "because we're going to lose the cover of the forest soon and we should put our disguises on now."

Casting my eyes west, I did notice that the trees were beginning to thin. "You want to do disguises?" I queried, scratching my head. "I guess that's probably a good idea. It'd help us avoid trouble, at least." Uncle Souhei's warning drifted into mind.

"You're blond, so you'll fit in if you don't do anything too outrageous," Kakashi grunted, swinging his pack off of his shoulder and pulling it open. Which was true—the closer to Iwa you got, the higher the frequency of encountering blonds became. "I'll just have to wear a hat…"

I hopped around to the other side of the tree trunk before pulling off my own bag and rifling through it. It was always smart for a ninja to bring a civvie outfit; sometimes you needed to blend in and a henge just wouldn't work. It could get bulky to carry too many sets of extra clothes, admittedly, but lucky for me I had fuuinjutsu magic on my side.

To be safe, I took my hair out of its side ponytail and braided it normally before getting dressed. A change of hairstyle probably wouldn't help much if someone were to recognize us, but I wasn't going to drop any more clues than I needed to. After that, I took off my forehead protector and traded my sandals for tabi and zouri before bundling up in a light blue winter kimono and a darker haori.

"Really?" I demanded when I came back around and saw that, even though Kakashi had dispensed with his mask, he was still hiding his face behind a red scarf. He too was dressed in a commoner's kimono; he had a conical hat on his head to hide his conspicuous silver hair.

"You look super suspicious like that," I declared, jabbing my finger at his face. "You'd better take it off. People might suspect!"

"They won't." Kakashi waved a hand. "The temperature is going to drop even more the farther north we go. If I don't wear this, the cold air will agitate my asthma."

The perfect excuse, delivered with the perfect straight face in the perfect tone of voice. Poker players, I distantly mused, would kill to lie like that.

"You are so full of bullshit, Kakashi Hatake," I muttered grumpily, shoving his shoulder and making the I'm-watching-you motion with two fingers. "Just wait. I'm patient… you can't hide your face from me forever.

"Watch me," Kakashi cheerfully replied.

Though I glowered about it, he kept the scarf on as we jumped down from the treetops and onto a footpath. Kakashi began explaining the route we were going to take to the village, detailing the two intersecting passes and surrounding terrain we were going to cross. Frankly, I only understood half of it, and several minutes passed in silence as I tried in vain to process his words into a mental image. Suffice to say that my brain was not wired for cartographical pursuits.

"...So, cover story," I began after a moment, grimacing and deciding to quit the endeavor altogether. "I'm thinking brother and sister who got separated from their family of traders. Are there any major trade routes near this village? We could say we know they'll pass by here eventually, or something like that."

"Kinoko Valley is a major stop for the Junbei line, one of the main arteries of the iron market's network," Kakashi supplied easily, looking unsurprised by the brevity of my mental map-making battle. "Trade caravans do often come through here because it's one of the only spots where wheeled transport can cross the mountains into Earth Country."

"Perfect!" I beamed. That worked out far more easily than I'd anticipated. "Cover story confirmed."

"No, not quite. Make it cousins rather than siblings," Kakashi instructed. "We couldn't pass for brother and sister."

I opened my mouth to protest before pausing and considering it. Our colorings weren't even remotely similar, and even if I had never seen his face uncovered I knew for a fact that mine was too pointed to look anything like his. He was probably right.

"Okay, you have a point," I acquiesced. "Cousins, then. Names?"

"Common ones," was the immediate reply. That was also unsurprising. Rule one of espionage was to be as inconspicuous as possible, after all.

"Suzuka and Takashi," I suggested, feeling just a little bit excited. I'd never gotten to make up a fake identity before, unless you accounted Academy exercises. All of my missions until now had mostly been focused on nin-to-nin combat, so there had never been a need for those skills. "Surname?"

"No surname," Kakashi determined after a moment of contemplation, either oblivious to my enthusiasm or uncaring. "It's easier that way."

Believe it or not, here in the Narutoverse, there were certain pockets of the population that lacked family names. I vaguely recalled that at one point in Japan surnames were restricted to certain classes, so it might have been one of those strange cultural translations that had carried over between Earth and this universe. It certainly fit the semi-feudal atmosphere of the series. That would also probably explain why there were some characters who had never been shown to have last names, like Tenten and Jiraiya, who may or may not have come from nameless families.

Well, in any case, it wouldn't be unusual for children from some obscure trading caravan to be surname-less. If anything, it only strengthened the image of "common folk" that we were shooting for. Unfortunately, though, that was probably as good as our cover was going to get. Since we were travelling without an adult despite how young we were and that it was uncommon to have civilian kids out on their own, were were bound to raise some eyebrows. Hopefully, though, we would be able to get by without trouble if we played our cards right.

"We'll be arriving in about ten minutes," Kakashi murmured, snapping me out of my thoughts. He glanced up to gauge the position of the sun. "We've made good time. We won't have to wait to approach the village chief."

Well, that was good. We would be able to start working right away, and it was in our best interest to finish quickly. The less time we spent in a danger zone like this, the better—not only for our sakes, but for the people around us. Ninjas tended not to care about collateral damage if it was for the sake of revenge, after all—and if anyone was going to come after us, it was going to be for revenge, whether it was against us in particular or against Konoha as a whole—so in the case of an altercation it was more than likely someone uninvolved was going to get hurt. The villagers would probably appreciate the forethought either way.

Before long we found ourselves standing in the middle of a tiny cluster of wooden houses. The village was neither bustling nor empty; there was a substantial amount of people about, but not enough to make the area crowded. Most of the property, though, was in some state of disrepair. The war had hit everybody hard, and these people obviously had not been an exception. The fact that everything was covered in a light coating of black dust didn't really help that image, either, since it gave the impression that everyone and everything was just a tad bit… dirty.

We found our way to the biggest residence of the village, which was coincidentally one of the more well-maintained houses, and quickly deduced that this was our destination. There were two men standing by the door, whom Kakashi approached with a suddenly hesitant step.

"Hello," he greeted, affecting an entirely convincing tone of timidity. "Um… may we speak with the village head, please? My cousin and I, we've been separated from our family, and we were wondering if we could find somewhere to stay until the caravan comes by here on the way to the next trading post…"

I had to hand it to him, he was a great actor. I had never taken infiltration for his specialty—most kids our age in general weren't really good at it, since "ninja" for us had so far been mostly synonymous with "soldier" rather than "spy"—but then again, Kakashi _was_ all-around an excellent shinobi. His posture or expression didn't change at all even as he drew his hitai-ate halfway from the folds of his sleeve and quickly flashed it at the doorkeepers.

To their credit, the men only looked mildly discomfited to find out the regular-looking kids before them were actually trained killers in disguise; I did receive a particularly disturbed stare as we were ushered inside, though. Later on in life, as I went on more missions and met more people, I learned that it was the youth of shinobi that tended to bother people the most. I think I understood that perfectly well; something about the sight of a preteen throwing around knives and other assorted pointy objects while fighting to the death with some stranger or another did, after all, screw with your mind a bit. The fact that there were almost no "old" ninja to be found in the world only added to the problem. Shinobi as a rule of thumb tended to die early on, and it was only a handful of truly strong—and usually pretty legendary—ninja who managed to live long enough to start showing their age. It was just the nature of our work. And sometimes even the people who _were _incredibly skilled died young anyway.

"Are you the Konoha shinobi?" the village chief immediately questioned upon entering the room. We barely had the time to nod our heads yes before he demanded, "What are you doing in that getup? I asked for _ninja _to come. You're not going to scare off anyone dressed like that."

Oh, I thought dryly, so he was going to be one of _those _old guys.

"We were told to investigate a claim of theft from your village's mines," Kakashi pointed out reasonably, brushing off the brusque greeting—if it could be called a greeting—with aplomb. "Even if the appearance of ninja would scare off the perpetrators—and there's no guarantee that it would—chasing off our leads would not be conducive with our goals. This matter will be resolved much more cleanly if we can catch your thieves in the act."

"Dressing like this is also as much for the safety of your village as it is ours," I put in helpfully. "As you know, the situation between Konoha and Iwa shinobi is still quite tense, and the likelihood of a confrontation is high in this area. Like this we'll have a much better chance of avoiding any unnecessary conflict."

Taken aback, it was all the chief could do to blink and work his jaw for a few moments. Then he deflated, shoulders slumping with a sigh.

"I'm sorry," he apologized. "I've been very high-strung for the past few weeks. Our mines are the source of our livelihood; without them, we would starve. The thought of someone stealing from us has made me… well, you can obviously see for yourselves. Forgive me. I won't tell you how to do your jobs—I've worked with Leaf-nin before and I know of your competence."

I instantly felt the layer of ice I had been forming melt off. Well, he wasn't too awful after all, was he? I smiled a bit.

"The Leaf Village thanks you for your continued patronage," Kakashi replied diplomatically. "If I may ask, you have hired our services before…?"

There he went, gathering information right off the bat. Well, it wouldn't hurt us, at least. I couldn't see how this was immediately relevant to our work now, but who knows? It might be later. I wasn't going to stop him at any rate.

"Just some bandit problems a few years back," the man answered. "Before the war started. I'm sorry, I haven't gotten your names yet—?"

"For now, please refer to us as Takashi and Suzuka," Kakashi deflected smoothly. It probably _was_ safer if they didn't know, I reflected. After all, if there really were Rock ninja lurking nearby, even just the mention of Kakashi's name could set something off. Though I had only been on a handful of missions with him during the war, I knew for a fact he was brutal on the battlefield and that, subsequently, he had _much _more hate attached to his name than I did. In contrast, my given name wasn't even technically out in the world, so I had far less to worry about than he did.

"Ah… Takashi-kun, then?" the village chief murmured uncertainly. He looked like he was cognizant of the fact that information had just been withheld from him, but true to his word, he didn't protest. Instead, he added somewhat tentatively, "Most of the villagers address me as Kubo-dono…"

"To avoid suspicion, we'll do the same," Kakashi decided. "If we are in public, please do not refer to us as shinobi. We would rather be safe than sorry."

"Of course," Kubo quickly agreed. "I… suppose you'll be needing somewhere to stay. If you'd like, there is a free room in this house you can use."

Though one might think the fact that that offer of a single room would be awkward, what I actually felt was relief. I didn't want to be vulnerable on my own so close to Rock-nin territory, and it was always easier to sleep on foreign soil when you had a comrade nearby.

"We'll use your house as our base of operations, then." Kakashi nodded. "Well, Kubo-san, we'll update you with all of the relevant information once it's been obtained. If that's all, we'd like to get started right away."

"Yes, right. Don't let me keep you," Kubo hurriedly replied. He gave a shallow bow, which Kakashi and I both returned.

"I'll look around the village and see what I can find," Kakashi murmured to me once our client had gone away. "I should be able to determine whether the thief is local or not."

"I'll sneak off and check out the mines," I quickly volunteered. "See if there are any clues."

"Alright. Proceed with caution," he warned. "We don't know anything about this area."

"Of course." I fiddled with my sleeve, absently tracing my thumb over the portion of the seal on my forearm. "I'll be back before nightfall."

"I'll send a dog if you're late," he said. "Watch your back. Good luck."

"You too," I replied. Then, with our individual tasks at hand, we both turned and went our separate ways.

* * *

The first time I had been on an assignment and had to go on my own for something—I recalled it perfectly, by the way, it was splitting up to plant Hiraishin kunai in enemy territory—I remember being terrified. Going solo during a mission, even if it was just for a bit, was the scariest thing I had ever done in my life. Granted, Minato had been literally a single teleport away, but I had still been on my own and it had still scared the crap out of me. It had just been me and the wide world and any hostile ninja in it, with no other people there to jump in and save my ass that always needed saving.

But, as was often the case these days, there just wasn't any _time _to be afraid anymore. There was fear, and then there were the things that needed to get done. There were mission objectives, teammates relying on you, lives hanging in the balance—always something huge and important, on such a scale that you find that the weight of your feelings is completely irrelevant. So while I did feel a customary thrill of quiet distress as I set out to the mines, I pushed it down as I always did and focused on my job.

I made sure to put a firm lid on my chakra, keeping it turned inward so not to betray my status as ninjutsu-capable, though I did allow myself a shunshin for expediency's sake. When I got there, though, it was chakra silence: no jutsu, no flow techniques or muscle reinforcement. I felt strangely naked, keeping it all tightly tucked in my center; after so many years of feeling the buzz of chakra throughout my body I could only view its absence now as an eerie and foreboding silence.

The first bit of my investigation yielded nothing of use. I spent several minutes inspecting the shafts where it was obvious the villagers worked, checking tools and transport carts and mineral veins. The wear on each instrument was almost completely uniform despite the fact that deep there were slightly deeper gouges in some parts of the the caves, which indicated a larger amount of ore had been extracted. That suggested that the villagers were not responsible for the unaccounted deficit of material, or that if they were, that they were storing their tools elsewhere. I doubted it, though. The feeling in my gut told me it was an outside job, and I spent several more minutes combing the area for clues before I found something.

Minato's tertiary chakra nature was earth, so I had seen him use doton jutsu on a few occasions, just every now and then. Kakashi, however, used Earth Release all the time, and since I had begun spending more time in training with him, it had slowly been becoming easier and easier for me to detect evidence of doton use. It was as I was squinting at the floor that the telltale signs jumped out at me: a tiny elevation of the ground, made in a perfectly straight line, showing a slightly rugged edge before disappearing completely. The stopping point, I knew, was where the actual effect of the technique had manifested. I looked up and saw an iron vein with a chunk missing.

"Bingo," I whispered.

I got down on my hands and knees and spent a good half hour examining the faint remains of the jutsu further. It was a long shot, but I temporarily broke my chakra ban to use a bit of water-natured chakra flow on my hand. I had only begun training with it recently, but I was good enough to use it in the palms. According to Uncle Souhei, where wind's special capability was cutting through all materials, chakra or otherwise, water's was the defensive _absorption _of chakra. If I could pick up any residue from the technique, maybe, I might gain a valuable hint or two.

But to no avail. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get any chakra traces, and after a while I decided that it had just been too long since its use to pick anything up. Blowing out a frustrated breath, I stood up and decided to take a few paces back. It was good to go into the details, but maybe taking a look at the big picture would be more helpful at this point in time.

The longer I stayed, the more certain I became that we were dealing with the work of a shinobi. Neverminding the obvious use of ninjutsu—and while most ninjutsu users _were _ninjas, there were some non-shinobi out there with training in chakra techniques—the fact that everything was so _subtly _done had me convinced this theft had taken place with the touch of a professional. The ore had been siphoned off in small, unassuming bits rather than large slabs, which indicated at least a basic awareness of a need for stealth. If this had been some sort of rival company or village, or just a greedy merchant, that level of care for detail would have been neglected in favor of a quicker and fatter payload. But what really clinched to deal, in my opinion, was that the Earth Release techniques had almost perfectly been erased. _That _indicated a shinobi's knowledge, because only those in the habit of covering up ninjutsu would know the necessary methods of concealing them. Though there was a slim possibility that this _was_ just some chakra-trained professional mineral thief who really just didn't want to get caught, balance of probability had the perpetrator almost certainly as a trained shinobi. And while that in itself was an enlightening revelation, it also begged a bigger question.

Why was a ninja stealing iron from Kubo's village?

This opened up a whole new line of inquiry. What use did ninjas have for iron ore, and why did it have to come directly from the mines? Why couldn't they have just stolen some from the nearby iron market trade routes? Why _this _village's mines particular, what was the motivation? Was this ninja being paid to do this? Was it a personal matter? And more relevantly to ourselves, were they Iwa ninja? Friendly ninja? Enemy ninja? Nukenin?

I shook my head. This was something I needed to consult with Kakashi on. Nothing was really certain yet at this point, so it wouldn't do to be jumping to conclusions. All we knew now for sure was that there was a higher likelihood for us to encounter an earth-natured shinobi.

Even with that said, though, it didn't stop me from tensing up spectacularly when I emerged from the mines and saw a young boy staring with a furrowed brow at the entrance. I immediately yearned to reach out with my chakra and check if _this _could be our culprit, to gauge the size and intensity of his chakra signature, but I was incognito and I couldn't. On the off chance that this was an enemy-nin, and that this enemy-nin was also a sensor, it would blow our entire cover. So even though my fingers twitched toward their knives and my body instantly wanted to sink into a defensive taijutsu stance, I kept my hands at my sides while forcing my posture to be narrow and unbalanced, holding myself the way that civilians did.

The boy was my age, twelve, maybe thirteen. He had blond hair and brown eyes, and he too was bundled in a thick winter kimono and haori. He did not look particularly shinobi-like to me, but he could have just as easily been faking it like I was.

"Hey," I called, deciding to take a risk and engage him. Hopefully I could spin this as another layer of misdirection—it wasn't particularly a shinobi's nature to call too much attention to himself, so maybe the directness of my approach would throw him for a loop. "Do you know about these mines? These ones here?"

"Er," the boy said, jumping a bit and looking taken aback. I carefully considered his surprise before deciding to tuck it away in my head for future reference. "I—um, I'm not really from around here. I just know that there's iron in them."

"Oh," I murmured, trying not to look too sharp or critical as I eyed him up and down. Overt hyperawareness was one of the most major giveaways ninjas could expose themselves with, after all. It was okay to look curious, but being _too _curious could raise flags. "I'm not from around here, either. My name's Suzuka, by the way," I added in what I hoped was a friendly manner. Maybe by offering information, I could draw info back, too.

"I'm... Kazuma," the boy replied, carefully creeping closer. I could tell that he, too, was taking a good look at me. I privately prayed he hadn't glanced at a Bingo Book lately. "Where are you from?"

"I'm from a nomadic trading family," I lied easily. "We travel between Hi and Tsuchi no Kuni. My cousin and I got separated from the caravan, though, so we're waiting here until they stop at the Junbei post in Kinoko Valley."

"Oh," Kazuma said with a blink. "Well. That sucks, I guess. Where's your cousin?"

Hm. Two questions in a row indicated that he was digging as well. I made a mental note to tell Kakashi that we might be finding ourselves under close scrutiny very soon.

"He's in the village," I answered before too long a pause could pass. Tentatively, I tagged the boy as a potential suspect; then I made the split decision to pull out. "I'd better get back to him, actually. He'll be upset to know I wandered off and he hates it when I go exploring."

There, that was a good excuse. Not only did it imply that I frequently made a point of investigating my surroundings, which might help deflect suspicion over the fact that I had been snooping about the mines, it also suggested that my associated cousin wasn't involved in my behavior. Though if they found out I was a shinobi it would be likely they'd assume the so-called Takashi was one too, I would still rather not burn bridges before I had to.

"Oh," Kazuma said again. "Okay. Well, maybe I'll see you around. I guess."

"Bye," was my reply. I gave a little wave before turning and hurrying off, keeping my stride short and inefficient so not as to appear experienced with running. I also gave one calculated glance back.

Kazuma watched me go with an unreadable expression on his face.

* * *

**A/N: Surprise! Another massively fast update! And on Christmas, too. Oh, and Merry Christmas again, by the way! I know I said it last time, but hey.**

**Man, these chapters are really flying out, huh? I guess I've been waiting for a good opportunity to just put it all down. I'm so grateful I'm on break; now I can do nothing but write all day, which is a great and glorious thing. Now that we're past the I'm-from-another-world talk there's just so much to do. I can't keep it in, man!**

**Wishing you all well!**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	18. Age 12: Sakuya: Part 3

**Published: 12/29/2014**

**Edited: 7/26/2015. Check the dream sequence again.**

* * *

**Age 12: Part 5**

"_So that's when it started for you, then?"_

"_Yeah. Tomonobu said it was normal, though. Everyone had something."_

_"Be glad you didn't get migraines like I did. At first I just thought I was unlucky, since I had them before, too, but when I found out it was _his _fault…"_

"_Heh. I guess it just sucks to be you."_

"…_Oh, be quiet, Misuzu. Sometimes I don't know why I deal with you."_

* * *

"You're late," Kakashi said upon seeing me. His arms were crossed, and though his lower face was still obscured, I could still tell by his visible eye—he had used his bangs to cover his Sharingan since he couldn't wear his hitai-ate—that he had been getting restless. Pakkun was sitting at his feet, though he stood and jumped into the bushes at my appearance.

"I didn't know if I was being followed," I explained, glancing over my shoulder briefly to make sure no one was nearby. "I had a run-in with someone at the mines. I don't know for sure if he was a shinobi or not, but I didn't want to use chakra to Flicker back and give myself away if he was."

"Someone at the mines?" Kakashi's gaze narrowed; in the light of the setting sun, he looked very dark and mysterious. I wondered if people needed to practice to achieve that kind of dramatic effect. "…We need to debrief. Come inside; my ninken have established a perimeter, so it's safe to talk. They'll let me know if anyone gets too close."

"He gave his name as Kazuma," I informed when we had retreated to the room Kubo had allotted us. We both sat down on the two futons by the window, settling in for a long discussion. "I'm not good enough to use chakra sense while suppressing my own signature, so I couldn't assess him, and it's entirely plausible he was just a regular kid, but it's also just as likely he's not. He was as unfamiliar with the area as I was and he did try and grab some info when we spoke." I paused. "Just so you know, Suzuka often wanders off and explores. Takashi finds this irritating and in no way encourages it."

Kakashi inclined his head, acknowledging this new layer to our story. That was what covers were for, after all, and though more details made it harder to keep track of, the more you added to a story the more convincing it became.

"As for the mines themselves…" I took a piece of my hair and began twirling it around my fingertip. "I found no evidence that any of the villagers are responsible for the theft. The tools aren't overworn and the siphoning took place very subtly. In fact, it's unlikely that any regular civilian is responsible."

"I came to the same conclusion." Kakashi nodded. "After speaking with the villagers, it's obvious they're not involved. Their indignance at being robbed was genuine and they're worried about the financial impact of the situation. No one has come across any unprecedented fortunes and the sense of community is quite strong here, so it's unlikely the any of the villagers would be able to steal from one another without displaying heavy guilt. I've not come across any indicators of who the thief could actually be, though."

"I'm almost certain it's a shinobi," I confessed. "There was evidence of ninjutsu use. That on its own might not have been enough to convince me, but the fact that it was almost perfectly covered up… there are few people besides a ninja who would know how to do that."

Kakashi's brow creased, but he gave no other visible reaction to the news that our ore burglar was a shinobi.

"Did you find anything we could use?" he questioned. The face he wore now was his thinking face, a face that spoke of countless spinning cogs rapidly trying to turn their way to an answer.

I shrugged my shoulders and began describing the mines and the results of my investigation, detailing the walls and the tools, the ore deposits, the old doton jutsu and my failed attempts at gathering chakra from it. I also took a moment to recount my encounter with Kazuma.

"Short hair, cut at the ear, blond, brown eyes, probably about two or three inches shorter than you are," I said, gesturing above my head. "Thin face, rounded jaw, eye shape was almond type two. I didn't catch much of his build since he was wearing so many layers, but he didn't seem particularly overweight, and I wouldn't be surprised if he leads a physically active lifestyle. He's about my age."

Once upon a time, saying someone was a twelve-year-old would have immediately classified him as harmless, or dependent, or something along those lines. Now, though, age was simply that: the outward indication of the time a person had spent in the world. It had no bearing on a person's skill or danger level. Not to a ninja.

"We'll keep an eye out," Kakashi muttered. "I'll tell Pakkun and the others." He took a moment to gather his thoughts, processing the new information, before updating me on his finds.

The moon was high in the sky by the time we finished consolidating our information. Pakkun dropped in once, at which Kakashi took a minute to give him Kazuma's description. After that, though, we both immediately crashed onto our futons and went straight to sleep. Despite the fact that, beyond a lot of running—which was a standard activity for any ninja—there hadn't been a lot of physical activity today, I found myself completely exhausted. There was something about the thought of maintaining a cover that drained the mind; I could only imagine how Kakashi felt, since he'd been the one putting on a show all day for the villagers. Somehow, though, it was a pleasant kind of exhaustion. Different from the weariness of combat fatigue, when muscles ached and fingers trembled, or, if you were injured, wounded flesh throbbed.

I liked it much better.

Though I slept like the dead, I dreamed an odd dream that night. It had a different tone from my usual dreams; this one was more lucid, yet not, almost like I was replaying a distant memory I didn't have. It was a bunch of people in a room, some young adults, some middle aged, talking with soundless, wordless sentences. Two were sitting in chairs, and three were on the floor; one stood, leaning on walls with arms crossed. The pointed at themselves and each other and at a tiny stack of black books sitting on a table, not quite arguing but not quite trading light conversation.

There was gravity in that room. Their featureless faces were grave. I got the distinct feeling what was being discussed was a private matter, some topic that no one else would understand. In a way, they were bound to each other by it, even though a majority of them were unfamiliar with one another on a personal level. They seemed to view each other with a cautious warmth, the way one regarded a distant but friendly cousin never before met.

It was strange. I had the feeling that I was there, one of the people cross-legged on the ground.

"…uzu. Suzu." A hand shook my shoulder. "Suzu?"

I blinked awake and saw, against a background of early morning light streaming through a window, a pair of mismatched eyes staring down at me. The sight of Kakashi's active Sharingan jarred me straight from a sleepy daze to alarmed wakefulness; I shot up straight in bed, very nearly clocking my teammate in the face in the process.

"Suzu!" Kakashi held up a hand as I whipped my gaze about in search of danger, one hand flying up while the other shot to my nonexistent belt pouch for kunai I didn't have. "Calm down, nothing's happening."

It took a moment for my frantically beating heart to settle. I blinked again and lowered my arm. Then I turned my head to look at him.

"Why do you have the Sharingan out, then?" I asked, bewildered.

"Your chakra was doing something," Kakashi replied, shutting his good eye and staring at me with a blood-red gaze. "…It's stopped, though."

"What? What do you mean?"

"It was shifting, like you were under a genjutsu," he replied, tilting his head. "But you weren't, I'm pretty sure. I couldn't see any foreign chakra. I even did a dissipation, but it didn't stop."

"…I slept through you putting chakra in my system?" That… was disturbing news. Even a genin would wake up if there was foreign chakra in her system, and beyond that, I was a _sensor, _however novice. It would be _impossible _for me to sleep through that.

"You didn't even twitch," Kakashi answered. "…It was a bit disconcerting. Were you having a nightmare?"

"Not at all," I denied, perplexed. "I… don't really know what it was about, actually. I don't think it was bad, though."

Silence fell. For a moment, we both stared at each other, clothes dishevelled and hair mussed with sleep. I was suddenly struck by the roundness of Kakashi's face; even though he had put his mask back on sometime before going to sleep, I could still tell his cheeks had just the slightest hint of fading baby fat to them. Maybe it was just the fact that he was lacking his usual collectedness at the moment, but something about his messy hair and crumpled shirt seemed to emphasize his youth.

It was a peculiar feeling, seeing as all this time I'd been looking up to him as an elder and a senpai. I found myself feeling almost old, like I'd abruptly regained all of the cumulative years of my two lives.

Kakashi must have noticed the bemusement in my gaze, because he shifted with just the slightest bit of awkwardness. He began flattening his wayward mane with one hand; then he tried to tug the wrinkles out of his pajamas in a way that looked almost self-conscious. Idly, I wondered why he felt the need. Compared to me, I thought dryly, he looked positively impeccable. Not only had my hair spontaneously decided to flip gravitational orientations in the night, I knew for a fact that I drooled when I slept, and that I currently had a very unflattering streak of dry dribble on my chin. I always did in the mornings.

But then again, I was not bashful when it came to displaying inelegance. Maybe Kakashi was embarrassed to have been caught looking uncomposed; as aloof as he appeared, I mused, even he would have to be somewhat concerned with the opinion of his peers. Though I was untroubled because he had seen me in states many times more humiliating—it had been unavoidable, me being the youngest and most inexperienced member of Team 7—if we went in the opposite vein, I realized, I had never witnessed him looking anything short of blisteringly cool.

"You can use the bathroom first," I offered charitably, feeling a tiny tingle of delight at having caused the unflappable Kakashi Hatake discomfort. He immediately rose and exited the room.

Sometimes, I reflected, it paid to be a slob.

* * *

I had to spend the day in the village, as the people had not yet seen hair nor hide of me. Kakashi had excused my absence with the usual fare: ah, she's tired, she's resting, she's been under stress. He had been a bit stereotypical in his painting of a fragile little girl, delicate and tuckered out by foot travel, but it was alright. We could make it work. Perhaps Suzuka lived a double life, too—a sweet and dainty flower to some and a headstrong rebellious bull to others, running amuk and exploring, constantly straining on her leash. It was a classical character archetype, and by nature I had enough sass to sell it. Lord knew I had fun quietly disdaining Kakashi behind his back, in view of the villagers when they thought he wasn't paying attention. By evening they were convinced Suzuka had pulled the wool over Takashi's eyes ages ago, and that that was the nature of their relationship.

It was a good ploy. The more interesting the foreground, after all, the less notable its backdrop became. At sundown the talk was not _did you see those children travelling alone_ or _there's something strange about those two _but rather _did you see the faces that girl was making? _and _he's doesn't have a clue how hard he's being played _and _ha, I knew a girl like her in my youth—she was such a troublemaker_. Spies and ninjas didn't even cross their minds.

Even if it was just pretend, it was fun to have Kakashi be the one out of the loop for once. I may or may not have gotten a little power-drunk on my newfound authority in this supposed relationship; I spent several private moments quietly laughing my lungs up between social interactions. Kakashi might have been chagrined by these circumstances, but being the professional he was, he showed nothing. It was the plan, after all, and it was working.

Still, even though I teased him mercilessly, I got the sense that he didn't mind. He was a shinobi, after all, and a very centered one at that. Insult slid off his back the way water fell through a sieve. In fact, the aura he began giving off halfway through the day was one I was actually quite familiar with; it was the air of an older brother humoring a silly little sibling for his own amusement, a kind of demeanor that Minato often carried in the presence of his younger cousins, myself included. I didn't mind one bit, though. I _liked _the part of silly little sibling, and being one suited me just fine.

Beneath all of that, though, I found myself wondering when I had learned to subsist under so many layers. Oh, some of them were easy enough. The Suzuka-and-Takashi layer, that was just play. The unshakeable-professional-ninjas layer we had shown to Kubo… well, that had been a bit tougher, but faking confidence and self-assurance was a life skill necessary for social acclimation, and I had luckily managed to pin that down in high school. And if I continued in this route and kept taking more missions like this—as I likely would—I suspected that layer would eventually cease to be a layer at all. I would build a genuine confidence so long as I continued to gain experience. Despite everything I had already gone through, after all, I was still just a beginner at this ninja business; there was plenty of room for me to grow.

It was the layers below those that troubled me. The personal layers. First was the one that said "even though I'm used to operating on a full team, I'm not wary of working with you at all, Kakashi." Pretending I was unbothered by the fact that Minato was not around and that we didn't have Rin… that was a mask made for the self, not for the sake of the mission. I needed it, of course, to work and to cope, but it was a mask nonetheless, and no matter how good I had become at blocking it out, the anxiety behind it was still there. And that was saying nothing of the "I'm a perfectly competent chuunin already, I could totally lead a mission on my own if I needed to" I was putting out, nor the "I'm not nervous about being so close to Iwagakure even though these guys once _crushed my arm into bits_," nor even the "I'm a solid ninja who can pull my weight in this partnership" I pretended to believe. Not that I didn't think I was a decent ninja, because I _could _fight and I _did _know basic strategies and few good jutsu… It was just that I always found myself with the quiet, unstated feeling that somehow I was just lacking in competence. The razor-sharp wit, the deeply ingrained skepticism, the stoic control of emotions… all of these attributes of shinobi were ones I had not been raised into. On Earth, in America, if you were angry there was nothing wrong in letting people know; you didn't have keep a lid on yourself. You didn't always have to be suspicious, either. Oh, sometimes in the shady areas you did, but the level of cynicism the Narutoverse operated at was far above the one I had grown up with. When I had been a child, at least, backstabbing had been viewed as dirty and cowardly, however common it might have been. Here, backstabbing was just a means to an end; there was nothing wrong about it. And as for being smart… well, I couldn't deny it would help you, but my society had been one fashioned to cater to idiots. The IT departments of various electronic companies came to mind. Here in the Naruto world, though, if you were an idiot, you suffered. No one was going to coddle you.

How could I ever be at ease with this career, knowing I was disadvantaged at such a fundamental level? I couldn't. And so there were those stratums. And beneath those were the _really_ gritty parts, the ones that were hard to understand. Case in point was my relationship with Kakashi. We had _not _begun as friends, not in any capacity, but now, somehow, I had managed to glimpse in him the visage of an older brother. How had that happened? Was this newfound friendliness genuine, and had the tension between us really just dissolved just like that? Or was I layering here, too, compartmentalizing resentment and fear? I didn't know.

This was not the life I had been raised to lead. Once upon a time, I had been forthright. It had been in my personality to display all of my emotions and to bluntly say what I thought, to shut down my brain every once in a while and still manage to function in daily life, to trust, every now and again, in the kindness of a random stranger. All of this sneakiness, all of this deception, all of this distrust—it was not my style. But somehow, here I was, up to my eyeballs in these endless pretenses. When had I changed so much?

"You've gone awfully pensive all of a sudden," Kakashi commented, looking up from his work. He was maintaining his weapons, cleaning his blades and ordering his supplies. Today had not seen much work beyond the further establishment of our cover; most of it had been spent either out in the village or here in Kubo's house, stewing over how to proceed with our mission.

"Have I?" I murmured, staring contemplatively out over Kubo's yard. He had a traditional Japanese house, the kind where the rooms at the rear had doors that opened to the outside. "I guess. But sometimes you just have to stop and think of things, you know. Just to see where you're standing in the world."

Kakashi grunted assent to that, though he didn't do anything else. I wondered if he ever worried these kinds of worries. There was no doubt he was a supremely gifted ninja… though maybe that in itself was just as troubling as my predicament.

"Hey," I found myself saying. "Let's go to the mines. We haven't come up with a course of action yet, but maybe if we're there together, we'll catch something I missed. There has to be a way to find out more about this thief."

Kakashi considered me carefully, weighing our options in his head. I let him. He was good at playing long games, and his insight was invaluable for this operation, which would span weeks. I usually operated in the short-term as much as possible, and even though I was decent at seeing ahead, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some unfavorable factor about this potential trip that I had missed. I couldn't see for myself how another visit to the mines might cause harm, but perhaps he would.

But after a moment, he gathered his tools and returned them to their proper pouches. "It's a good idea," he said, picking up his civilian clothes—he had shed them earlier with the excuse that they were constricting and he'd rather not wear them if it wasn't necessary—and putting them on over his regular gear. "I was meaning to take a look soon, anyway."

I smiled at this. It was a bit of a strained smile, I realized, but I tried not to be too bothered. Everyone had doubts now and again. It was best to just keep moving.

I had the feeling that if I didn't, I'd get stuck tangling my way through the layers forever.

* * *

A solid week and a half passed before we took real action. Kubo, I could tell, had been antsy to see us get started, but he gave us space to plan. Though it was clear he favored a hastier approach—which was no doubt due to the fact that the economic strain on the village was only continuing to build—he seemed understand well that ninjas did everything deliberately. If we did not act, it was for a reason. We had to do much, _much_ more research before we saw fit to make a move.

Kakashi and I switched roles three days in, which put me as information gatherer and him as data analyst. Not only did it suit our covers' personalities better—Takashi was now established to be a somewhat timorous shut-in who preferred to stay indoors, while Suzuka was more adventurous and outgoing—but it suited our skills, too. Kakashi had a way with crunching numbers and seeing patterns, and Kubo had surrendered all records at his disposal; my teammate had set immediately to searching for something of use. As for me, I was far more suited to social pursuits than he was, so I established myself in the community and got to know the people, defining their temperaments and habits and lifestyles. That way we would know if anything was going on domestically; it also put me in a good spot to pick up any relevant gossip.

"I've found something," Kakashi announced to me after a standard day of monitoring the village. "A pattern. It may have to do with what you've been picking up recently."

As of late, anxious rumors were flying about the cliffs just south of the village. That area was wasteland and not often traversed, so nothing was really confirmed, but passersby had been reporting _disturbances_, as they called them. Things like localized earthquakes and rockslides and strange noises. There had been a shinobi battle there, a few months before the war's end, and everyone seemed just a bit nervous about it—around here, ninjas were actually just a nervous topic in general. I had suspected there might be some relation between those cliffs and our situation, but I had nothing solid to prove it.

"I was viewing the records on the mines' monthly output for the past year. August was when the irregularities started; the total monthly profits decreased by about seven percent. So I began looking at the weekly records, comparing them with a baseline created from the previous years' data, and I discovered that the dips always occur in a single week," he informed. "The totals for the others in that month were as expected. The week this occurs seems to shift erratically—half a year isn't enough to pick out a defined system—but it was enough to work with. I looked at this month's figures and I've discovered that a dip hasn't occurred yet."

I felt a brief flash of excitement jolt through my chest.

"It's the end of the month," I said eagerly. "That means the theft will occur this week."

"Exactly." Kakashi nodded sharply. "This second part I discovered accidentally, but it connects tangentially with these rumors you've reported. Three months ago Kubo wrote down a note that a merchant had failed to come pick up his shipment because he'd heard that earthquakes were occurring in the area. This note was dated in the first week of the month… the same week the dip occurred." He cleared his throat. "It's thin, but…"

"Even thin is good," I assured him. "I'll ask around and see if anyone remembers the last time the cliffs acted up. For now, though, we've got a chance to catch our robber."

"We'll sneak out to the mines tonight, then. If we can, we'll trap the area and hide. We'll have to remove everything before the workers return in the morning, but you're decently proficient with fuuinjutsu, right?"

I pursed my lips a bit at that. I had managed to pick up a bit of sealing theory, yeah—Minato often gushed about the genius of the Serizawa theorems, so I knew some information about the physical-dimensional aspects of sealing, which was what Touya Serizawa had pioneered in fuuinjutsu—but that was far from proficiency. It was more of… trivia knowledge.

"I've picked up a few tricks, but I can't devise my own seals, if that's what you're asking of me," I said. "I know a couple of things like tripwire seals and chakra-activated triggers, or timers. Niichan loves devising trap gambits with them—he leaves his notes at the House for us to look at when we're bored."

And though it wasn't easy to be bored in a home so full of people, where so much was going on, it _did _happen. Jinta and I had taken a few afternoons to look them over and try setting them up as an obstacle course. When Minato had discovered us doing it, he taught how to make the involved seals himself.

"That'll suffice," Kakashi murmured. "If we've been doing our jobs properly, they won't be expecting traps at all, and with the added surprise of ninja, we should be able to succeed. Come on—we need to go prepare."

The afternoon was spent ironing out a plan of attack. Kakashi had every inch of the mines memorized, and he sketched their layout on a paper for us to plan on. We both determined a good setup for the traps while guessing at the likeliest area for our mysterious ninja to strike, deciding where the good hiding spots were and what exit routes were available. When he began to hammer out the little details, I drew back to start making seals. They had to be paper, since I didn't know them intimately enough to touch-apply them.

Evening saw us dressing as ninjas again, rather than civvies, but in a way I'd never actually dressed before. There were Konoha-ninja clothes, and then there were _ninja_-ninja clothes. I was used to the former, but this time, we were using the latter: all-black shirts and pants, blank, unmarked forehead protectors, hoods and masks. Kakashi stuffed his hair into a bandanna for the sake of guarding his anonymity, so I did the same, tucking my blond locks into a tight bun and donning my hooded scarf again. I made sure to wrap it so my face was as covered as possible, and then I pinned it to make sure it wouldn't fly off if we had to fight instead of leaving its ends hanging like I usually did. We made ourselves look as androgynous as possible. The fewer defining features we had in a situation like this, the better.

I admit that there was something thrilling about this level of secrecy. In my mind, only really high-level shinobi like ANBU or jounin on had the need to hide their identities, so I felt rather fancy. It was a shallow thrill, though, when I took the time to think about why we were employing such measures.

The fact of the matter was that our lives were in danger, even moreso than they usually were. Regular battles on regular missions were just shinobi crossing blades because they had to; either side would be willing to withdraw if a conflict didn't suit their purposes. If we got into a fight right now, though, either for being Leaf-nin or for being Kakashi of the Sharingan and Konoha's Bloody Threads, more likely than not there was going to be a vendetta behind it. And I knew perfectly well that a fight with a person on a revenge kick was vastly different than a person trying to clear obstacles for a mission goal. Avengers were ruthless, after all. I spared a few minutes to think of Sasuke.

Kubo saw us off with anticipatory anxiety, and after that I felt tension begin to build in my shoulders. Kakashi caught me running my hand up and down my left arm as we went, massaging its suddenly aching muscles. He sent me an inquiring look.

"I'm getting phantom pains," I tried to grumble, but even to my ears it sounded more fearful than disgruntled. I sucked in a breath; I held it, then I let it out with a sigh. "…It's just an old injury. Don't worry about it—I'm not usually bothered by this arm."

And I wasn't—not really. If it ever brought me discomfort, it tended to be the mental kind rather than the physical. Sometimes, when it was bare and I looked past the black markings of the seals on it and saw the faint traces of scarring, I would remember the moment it got crushed and cringe. It was a traumatic memory, to be sure, but I was usually okay with it. It was a single moment of time that I could push myself past. Physical pain from this limb was a more concrete reminder; it was also one more unpleasant.

"Sensei… once mentioned something about a cousin who almost lost an arm under his watch," Kakashi said slowly. "Now that I think about it, I never saw yours until he had put your jutsu seal on it, since you have arm warmers. Was that you he had been talking about?"

"Yes, that was me," I answered with another sigh. "I shouldn't complain, though. It's better than being dead."

The was a sharply bitter tone to that statement that I hadn't quite anticipated. I guess even after all this time, I still hadn't quite gotten over surviving the battlefield that Yoshiya had died on, had I?

"…No, I get it," Kakashi said after a moment of silence. He put a hand on his Sharingan, one finger lightly tracing the scar on his eyelid. "Old injuries, you think they're healed, but they hurt every now and then anyway."

I looked away. Old injuries… his wasn't old. It had hardly been a year. The pain behind his eye hadn't healed at all.

"Every shinobi has his burden," Kakashi finally spoke again. "You shouldn't worry about it, either. It's fine."

Outwardly, I nodded, but within I wondered whether he had said that for my sake or his own.

* * *

**A/N: Out of curiosity, how fast do you all suppose ninjas run at non-shunshin speed? I know a genin, at least, can keep pace with a horse at gallop, which is on average 25-30 mph. But I wouldn't be surprised if more experienced ninjas could go faster, neverminding that each individual has his own top speed. Opinions?**

**By the way, I am totally bullshitting my way through this talk of economics and mining and such. Same for Kakashi's data analysis. Fifteen percent… is that a lot? Does any of this sound believable? When people say writers can't do math, they're talking about my type of person. Stats and numbers are not my thing.**

**EDIT: Fifteen percent, it seems, _is _a lot. I've halved it to seven.**

**Anyways, enjoy the chapter!**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	19. Age 12: Sakuya: Part 4

**Published: 1/8/2015**

* * *

**Age 12: Part 6**

"_Suzu."_

"_Yeah?"_

"…_Thanks."_

* * *

When we arrived at the mines, Kakashi and I spent the better part of an hour setting up our traps, using Earth Release to bury the seals I had drawn just below the surface. It was a little tense; after our discussion on our old battle wounds, he seemed a little… off, but not to the extent that I felt the need to comment on it. Instead, I focused on placing several chakra-activated traps near the richer veins with the hope that our thief would use his doton ninjutsu above it. If he did, he'd find himself in quite the tangle.

We trapped the entrances and exits, too. I spent several minutes tweaking my touch seals so they would link with the paper ones. If I could establish a direct path between them, we would be able to apply chakra flow to the traps even from a distance, which would be immensely helpful. It took a few runs of trial and error, of course, but I eventually managed to blunder my way to a stable connection.

(Trying to alter fuuinjutsu, I reflected, was a lot like trying to use algebra to solve an equation with fifty unknown variables. The comparison was especially meaningful when I admitted to being crap mathematics.)

"As far as non-lethal traps go, this is probably the best we'll get," I mused as Kakashi buried the last of the seals. "You know chakra flow, right?"

Kakashi stopped brooding and actually deigned to roll his eyes—eye, I mentally amended, since his Sharingan was shut—at me. "Of course I do."

"Earth-natured chakra flow makes materials nearly unbreakable, right?" I pointed out, rolling my eyes back. "_So_…"

"I suppose I have little choice if you can't do it yourself," he ribbed, making an overly loud sigh. "I guess it can't be helped…"

"Oh, shut up, Hatake, you can't expect me to use doton chakra flow—I'm not even remotely earth-natured. Besides, if you _want _to let the guy just cut his way out of capture, then by all means, go ahead."

We spent a few moments in witty repartee before retreating to a perch over the entrance to wait. After that, though, it was all business; Kakashi picked a spot, took a knee, and went completely silent. He was like a tortoise on a mountain, utterly still and unmoving. After about an hour had passed I found myself admiring his focus—he hadn't budged an inch. I felt positively childish at his side, fidgeting and scratching at itches and thinking all sorts of wandering thoughts.

It was almost dawn before we spoke again. I was just beginning to think that the thief wouldn't appear tonight when I felt a prick at the edge of my awareness. Kakashi's nose began to twitch seconds before the sounds of a hushed argument drifted up to our ears.

"Oniisama, wait. It's too risky. We can't."

A young voice. Not quite boyish, but still too high to be a grown man's. I felt my eyes narrow in recognition.

"Be quiet, Kazuto," was the terse reply. This voice was older, deep and rough. "I'll decide what we can and can't do."

Kakashi and I exchanged glances as a pair of blonds stepped inside. When the shorter one turned to look at the older, we both were treated to a view of his face.

_It's definitely Kazuma_, I signed at my partner.

_Be on guard_, was his reply. _If he was suspicious of you, they may be expecting us._

And sure enough, Kazuma—_Kazuto_—grabbed his brother's arm in protest and said, "Oniisama, you _know _what I saw when I was scouting last week. Kubo's hired someone and I think they're ninja. No, I'm almost positive."

"If they were ninja, they would have done something by now," his brother snapped back. "Besides, even if they are, what could they do against us? A little girl and some guy? No one I've met your age can match your talent, and to think they could even scratch me is laughable. We'd win a fight if it came to it. Now come here and help me."

"That's the kind of hubris that kills," Kazuto muttered churlishly even as he stepped forward and complied. They began making hand seals together. "I still say we don't risk it. What if we get killed? No one can stop Sakuya but us."

If Kazuto's brother was going to reply, he never got the chance. As soon as they slammed their hands down onto the ground, the seals beneath the surface exploded at the touch of their chakra. A storm of wire erupted below them, wrapping them head to toe in steel thread. I immediately activated the Strings of Fate master seal; when two thin wires materialized around my fingers, I held out my hand to Kakashi, who took them and pulsed his chakra.

"Your younger brother is a wiser man than you," Kakashi commented as we leapt down from our hiding spot, connected by the strings. "You should have left when you still had the chance."

Kazuto looked like he wanted to slap a hand over his face at the sight of us, though he was obviously prevented by the cocoon of wire he was wrapped in. "I told you," he groaned instead. "I _told _you, oniisama."

"Shut up, Kazuto," his brother growled. I took one look at his face and immediately felt wary. Unlike his brother, who had pleasant light brown eyes, his were a stormy gray, dark with danger and cunning.

"Iwa ninja, by the look of it," Kakashi said, unbothered, as he examined what was visible of their attire. Though they lacked hitai-ate, they were dressed in browns and reds, the signature colors of the Hidden Rock. The older brother even had a sleeve missing, the iconic mark of their jounin. "We were right to take caution."

"Got something to hide, little boy?" Kazuto's brother immediately barked. "Too scared of Iwa to show your face?"

I recognized the tone of someone try to talk his way out immediately. He was trying to rile us up.

"I don't show my face to anyone," was Kakashi's cold reply. He crossed his arms. "Don't hold your breath if you want to see it."

I felt a jolt of anxiety as our captive's gaze sharpened. Something about him was… unsettling. Outwardly, he appeared thuggish and brusque, but there was the undeniable glint of intelligence in his eyes. I had a hunch he was not as lax as he appeared. Had he been expecting a trap here? Had that argument earlier been for our sake, to make us think he was prideful and blind for it?

To lull us into false security?

"Ah, so you're one of the clever ones, then," he murmured, switching gears. A serpentine grin spread across his face. "I see. May I ask you a question, then?"

Kakashi cocked his head to the side and said nothing. Kazuto's brother was not deterred.

"Did it hurt to lose that eye?" he queried. The air about him was not quite as distressed as it ought have been, which was somewhat distressing in itself. If he wasn't feeling cornered… he was planning something.

"Are you sure we should be letting him talk?" I asked, catching Kakashi by the arm and tiptoeing to whisper in his ear. "I've got a bad feeling about this."

"Gag him, then." Kakashi turned away. "We can question them back at the village."

"I've never lost an eye myself, but I bet it hurt," Kazuto's brother continued blithely. "Probably not as badly as it hurt to lose your teammate, though. Am I right? Kakashi of the Sharingan."

For a moment, I thought my shock made an audible ping. Kakashi and I both whirled around.

"What, did you think it was hard to figure out?" The Iwa-nin quirked a brow. "Hardly. A one-eyed teenager and a little girl using wires and chakra flow. Every Rock ninja knows you two and what your presence meant during the war. I'd be a fool to not recognize Konoha's Bloody Threads and the murderer called Kakashi."

"What do you know about the person who gave me this eye?" Kakashi demanded. "Nobody on your side left the Battle of Kannabi Bridge alive."

A distinct sense of wrongness began taking me over. This man, Kakashi, this situation… something bad was about to happen. I could feel it.

"It's true that the Yellow Flash decimated the reinforcements sent for that bastard Taiseki's squad…" Kazuto's brother smiled. It was knifelike. "I barely managed to escape. I nearly died there, that day. But I remember every second of it."

I felt my lips part. A _survivor_ of Kannabi Bridge? I'd never heard of anyone managing to escape Minato with their life intact. When he went for the kill, he _killed_. No exceptions.

"It was a lot of chance that even the Flash was distracted enough to not notice I was alive," Kazuto's brother admitted. "I was lucky. But the same couldn't be said for your squad, could it? You lost someone there. Obito, that girl was screaming. Uchiha Obito, if he was the one who gave you your Sharingan."

Shit, this guy was even better at leaps of logic than Itsuki! He had deduced all of this just by the fact Kakashi had a scar over his eye? Hell, what were the chances of running into an Iwa ninja who had been at Kannabi Bridge? Not high, that was for sure.

"Don't speak his name, Iwa scum," Kakashi spat with extremely uncharacteristic vehemence. I knew he was not fond of Rock shinobi, but I didn't think he hated them enough to have outbursts over them. It wasn't in his nature to be so overtly emotional.

"Hey, calm down," I frowned, grabbing his wrist. Maybe I should have been expecting this. He _had _been pretty moody when we'd first arrived, after all. "He's trying to get you angry. Don't let him succeed."

Kakashi jerked his hand away. He took a deep breath. Then he glared, crossed his arms again, and began stalking away. I was relieved enough to miss the smug look on Kazuto's brother's face.

"Just run away, then," he called, looking like a chessmaster who'd just won a game. "Too bad. I didn't even get to ask about why the other girl is gone now. Not that I can't guess, of course—I'd be disgusted enough to leave too, if my teammate was cannibalizing the squad for body parts."

…Oh, he did _not_.

The reaction was immediate; I felt the explosion of killing intent before Kakashi had even turned around. In an instant, the mine was filled with the sound of a thousand chirping birds; a storm of angry chakra lanced through the air, sending violent shudders crawling down my spine. Kakashi lunged forward, red eye spinning in the dimness of the cavern.

"_Oniisama!_" Kazuto screamed.

If you'd asked me then, I'd say a lot of scary things had happened to me by that point. Tatsumi River had been traumatic. Waiting to know if Yoshiya was going to die had been pure agony. And Rin's kidnapping… that had been on entire different level. I was no stranger to fright.

But frightened did not quite describe the way I felt when I jumped in front of the Chidori.

In the instant I threw myself between my raging teammate and the man he wanted to kill, I wondered if this was how Rin had felt when she realized she was going to die at Kakashi's hand. Did she think the same thoughts? Did she think that, _oh_, Kakashi is going to loathe himself for this? Did she think about the mission, about what was going to happen after she was gone? Had she been scared to see a precious friend of hers with a gaze so consumed with uncontrollable hatred?

Or had she just acted, knowing she was doing what she had to do?

I will never forget the moment Kakashi's hand, covered in lightning, stopped an instant before it pierced my chest. Nor will I forget standing with my arms outstretched between him and an enemy ninja. I will always remember the way I trembled there, on that day, mere centimeters from death.

"Kakashi," I said.

He jerked, eyes wide. Petrified was the only way to describe him; his face was a snapshot of pure, unadulterated terror.

"Step outside," I ordered with calmness I did not feel. "You've been emotionally compromised. I'll handle the rest."

Shaking, my teammate slowly withdrew his hand, releasing the technique. "Suzu…" he whispered, clutching his wrist like it would jump away and skewer me of its own accord. He held it so tightly his fingers began to turn white. "I…"

"_Go_," I snapped, heart leaping as I felt a stir of movement behind me.

The realization that my back was to an enemy right now was enough to jar me out of the shock that had briefly begun to settle over me. I flicked my fingers and shoved wind chakra through the wires still clutched in my hand, hoping that that would be enough to keep me safe. Kakashi turned and staggered away without a word.

When I twisted my torso, I was met with the sight of Kazuto's brother sitting up, kunai in hand. The wire around his upper body had been severed; he'd probably started cutting them the moment Kakashi had let the chakra flow go. Now that they were charged with _my _chakra, though, they were leaving deep red lacerations anywhere they touched his bare skin.

"I wouldn't make any sudden movements if I were you," I warned, pointing at the threads that had sunken into his uncovered arm. "No one here can keep you from bleeding to death if your brachial artery is severed."

He froze, looking down at the blood beginning to spill from his skin. Likely he hadn't felt the cuts at all. Wind chakra really was just that sharp.

"Twitch your legs to run and they'll come right off," I vowed, turning to face him fully. I felt my fingers clench into fists. "I might take them off anyway, you bastard."

He only dropped his kunai in response. Kazuto was still as a statue beside him, looking completely paralyzed. Several moments of silence followed; the brothers before me scarcely dared to breathe as I stood over them, taking overly measured breaths.

"My name is Misuzu Namikaze," I said once I'd collected myself, pulling my hood down and letting them see my face, "chuunin of the Leaf. From this moment on, you are my prisoners. This is what's going to happen: I'm going to take you back to the village, and when we get there, we are going to _talk_. If you try to escape, you will die. If you speak another _word _about Obito Uchiha, you will die. And if you try to pull a stunt like that again…" I bent forward until I was nose to nose with Kazuto's brother, pouring every ounce of fury I had into my gaze. "…do so knowing that you will _die_. Are we agreed?"

Kazuto's brother swallowed. He did not quiver. But his voice did crack when he spoke.

"Agreed," he whispered back.

* * *

It was only after we were back at the village, settled inside with our prisoners tied up in the yard with Pakkun and the others as guards, that I crumpled into a heap and just let myself shake. I had marched Kazuto and his brother all the way back to village, in plain view of everybody, leaking killing intent the whole way there. I did not dare to lose even an inch of intimidation, knowing that if I did, things would not end well. Weakness was something I did _not_ want a ninja like Kazuto's brother to see. Even if he was cowed right now, he was a snake if I ever saw one. If he had managed to exploit even Kakashi's temper—no matter how emotional he had been at the time—I had little doubt he could manipulate mine.

Once I was out of his view, though, _oh_. I was a wreck. I threw down my hood and sat down at Kubo's living room table and put my head in my hands and just _cried_, residual terror making my heart race a thousand miles an hour. All at once I was overwhelmed. The traps, the Chidori, the _everything_, it all hit me like a bag of bricks.

Was _this _what it meant to be a commander? To promise men death and dismemberment, to push yourself into power with the threat of violence, to coldly eliminate your teammates from a situation when they were overwhelmed by their emotions? If it was, I didn't know if I wanted to learn how to be one. I looked down at the red-tinted wires in my hand and shuddered.

Kakashi, who had been sitting wordlessly across from me, looked up from where he had been staring at his feet. Other than him, the house was empty: Kubo had gone out to explain to the villagers what was going on. We'd caused quite a ruckus when we'd arrived, after all; I might have even caught a lady or two swooning at the sight of the blood still dripping down Junichi's arm.

"Suzu…" he muttered quietly.

"I'm sorry," I hiccuped, quickly drawing my sleeve across my face. "I—I just need a moment. It's not a big deal. I was just scared. It's fine."

Kakashi was silent a moment longer. After I had managed to stop my sobbing, though, he murmured, "I'm beginning to think the Chidori is evil."

I looked at him, biting my lip.

"This technique has brought nothing but misfortune," he said bitterly, holding up his hand with his fingers wrapped around the wrist, they way they always were when he initiated his signature jutsu. "The first time I tried it, I would have died if Minato-sensei hadn't saved me. It only became safe to use after Obito died, and since then I've almost killed two of my teammates with it. It might have been better if I'd never invented it at all."

"Kakashi," I sighed, using both of my hands to rub the bridge of my nose. "It's not your fault. Those were all accidents. Maybe you were reckless the first time, but you couldn't have helped those last two. Rin and I both intentionally got in your way. And besides, I'm not even hurt—"

"But you would have been!" Kakashi shouted, smashing his fist on the table with such abruptness I jumped all the way up to my feet. A loud crack split the air.

"Why did you do that?" he yelled, standing up. "Why did you jump in front of me? You would have have ended up like Rin. No, you would have died! Sensei wouldn't have been there to save you! What were you _thinking_?"

"Kakashi," I cringed, holding up a hand and hoping that the brothers in the yard couldn't hear us. "It's _fine_—"

"It _is not_!" Kakashi slammed his other hand down, chest heaving with emotion. "_Why, _Suzu? Do you understand what would have happened I hadn't stopped in time? Can you imagine how I would have felt? _Why _did you do that to me?"

"Because you would have killed him!" I finally shouted back, smacking my own palm onto the table. "You would have killed him for an insult! In anger, without thinking clearly, as an act of _hate!_"

At that, Kakashi went rigid. I clutched the hem of my shirt, panting.

"If you're so upset thinking about how you would have felt for accidentally killing me, tell me how you feel knowing you almost murdered someone in a fit of rage," I demanded. "Tell me how you would have felt knowing a man was dead because you got mad. What kind of person would you have been then? What would niichan say if he learned he'd raised a student like _that_?"

The mention of Minato made Kakashi recoil like he'd been slapped; for the second time that evening, his expression was one of horror. At that moment, I had the feeling all of the stress and self-loathing he'd been building finally came to a peak, because in the next was breaking down. He collapsed into the chair behind him, one hand coming up to clutch his head in disbelief, single eye wide and wet.

"…Take some time to calm down," I said after a moment, looking away. "I'm going to talk to Kazuto. I'll shout if I need you."

"Fine," Kakashi whispered, turning his head so I couldn't see his visible eye. I slid open the door to the hallway and left.

Before going out to the yard, I went to the room we were staying in. I changed into a turtleneck, traded my baggy pants for a skirt and over-the-knee socks, and pulled my chuunin vest back on. There was no point in hiding our identities anymore, now that both the villagers and the thieves knew who we were.

After putting my scarf back on, because it really was actually quite cold, I gathered my hair into its usual side ponytail. Then I stepped forward and pulled the door the yard open; both the ninken and our prisoners looked up. Though the former seemed fine, huddled together as they were, Kazuto and his brother looked like they were freezing from their spots on the ground.

"Where's Kakashi?" Pakkun asked, tilting his head.

"He's in the living room." I smiled wanly. "Why don't you go talk with him? I think he might need it."

Pakkun gave me an assessing look; he traded glances with the rest of the dogs. Then he said, "You guys stay here. Make sure they don't try anything."

There was a collective bark of assent. Pakkun bounded across the yard and into the house. I stared after him over my shoulder for a moment before sitting down on the veranda. Kazuto and his brother eyed me silently.

"Tell me your names," I said, propping my chin up on my fist. I held up a hand when the older of the two opened his mouth to speak. "I want Kazuto to talk."

I suspected that Kazuto's brother was good at twisting words. It was a trait common in clever ninjas. I'd likely get more straightforward answers from Kazuto himself. His brother seemed to understand my reasoning, because his face twitched like he was holding back a scowl.

"…My name is Kazuto Akiyama," Kazuto said after looking to his brother—who nodded grudgingly—for approval. "My brother is Junichi Akiyama."

"Are you from Iwagakure no Sato?"

Kazuto nodded.

"Ranks?"

"Chuunin and jounin," Kazuto sighed. Junichi looked irritated.

"Was you brother present at the Battle of Kannabi Bridge?" I questioned, narrowing my eyes. Even now I still wasn't quite sure I believed him. Kazuto, though, nodded again.

"He nearly died," he explained. "According to the med-nin, he _did _die for a bit. Heart stopped and everything. But he made it in the end."

I flicked my gaze toward the left. So this man really had managed to live through an attack from Minato. I… didn't know whether to be impressed or not. Either way, though, he was undoubtedly a very skilled ninja.

I let a long moment of silent pass, partly to organize my thoughts, partly just to make them uncomfortable.

"Who's Sakuya?" I finally asked. For a moment, Kazuto took on a look of confliction, staring at his feet, then his brother, and then me. He worked his jaw; he opened his mouth, shut it, and opened it again, and then sighed.

Honestly, I expected to meet a lot of resistance. I was getting geared for a long and frustrating interrogation. But instead, Kazuto said, "It's a long and complicated story. But I'll tell you everything. Maybe you can help."

"Kazuto!" Junichi immediately protested.

"It's not like we have a choice either way, oniisama," his brother shot back. Then he turned his gaze back to me.

"I don't have quarrel with you or Kakashi-san," he told me. "I only wanted to do the right thing. Stealing the ore… I thought it would work. Oniisama has been doing his best since Miyu-san died, since he said it was our responsibility."

Well, that eliminated the possibility of an employer, I mused. This was shaping up to be a personal problem. Now I needed to hear the motive more than ever.

"Tell me what's going on," I urged softly, raising my voice just enough to let it carry over the distance between us. "Maybe something can be done."

Kazuto closed his eyes. Then he said, "Sakuya… is a first generation summon animal. A giant mole."

…

A… giant _mole_? I couldn't help it—my eyebrows flew up.

"She's pretty huge," Kazuto added. "Bigger than two houses. Miyu-san met her up north, deeper into the mountains."

For a moment, I considered it. Well, it wasn't impossible. Giant animals were not uncommon in this universe. Gamabunta was the size of _several _houses, and so were Katsuyu and Manda. I didn't really know how one went about forming a contract with a summon animal, unless it was the kind of contract that was handed down, as the ones in Konoha were, so I couldn't _immediately_ discount him…

"For a while, things went well between those two," Kazuto continued when it was clear I was going to maintain my silence. "They were terrors on the battlefield. They wreaked havoc. Sakuya would burrow underground and collapse entire cliffs to get rid of enemy platoons. She made rockslides and earthquakes… she was like a force of nature. But one day, well…" he sighed and looked away. "Right before the war ended, they went to battle. Miyu-san ordered Sakuya to tear up the field. Sakuya went on a rampage… and she's been uncontrollable ever since. Miyu-san was killed."

"A rogue summon?" I murmured. I had seen a couple of them before. Without a summoner to give them direction, they usually kept to their last order—to fight—until someone finally stopped them by killing them. Such cases only ever occurred with smaller summons, though, such as ninken and the like. The owners of contracts with larger summons almost always had successors to take their place.

"…Wait a second," I said after a moment of silence. Rockslides and earthquakes. A battle right before the war ended. The desolate wastelands where shinobi had once fought… "No. Are you saying… the incidents at the cliffs south of the village… are a product of a giant _mole_?"

Kazuto blinked. "How did you know she was south of here?" he asked.

Holy shit, that was _exactly _what he was saying. For moment, I could only stare. If this kid was telling the truth…

"Bull!" I gasped, jumping to my feet. Kakashi's largest ninken perked up, looking at me questioningly. "Can you go south and confirm the presence of a giant mole summon, please? If this is true, the villagers are in danger."

"Don't bother," Junichi interrupted, speaking for the first time. "He'll only get himself killed. Thanks to you lot stopping us, we haven't fed Sakuya all month. She'll rip him to shreds if he goes."

"Fed her—?" I stopped. "Don't tell me that _this _is why you guys have been stealing iron."

"Iron ore," Junichi corrected tiredly. "Refined iron would make her ill. Though that was what some of our comrades wanted, Sakuya was a precious friend to Miyu. I wanted to avoid hurting her if I could."

"Are you serious?" I asked incredulously. "…I thought moles ate things like worms, and… and nuts, or something."

"Do you think a giant mole the size of two houses could be satiated by _worms_?" Junichi raised an eyebrow. "No. She eats mineral-rich earth and rocks. It's the reason why she can dig through cliffs and solid stone; her claws were made for tearing apart things like rock formations. We've been keeping her docile by overfeeding her."

"Oh my God, you really mean it," I said astoundedly. "I… I've got to say, this wasn't what I had in mind when I was sent to investigate ore theft…"

"That's the truth of the matter," Junichi muttered, looking away. "We've been stealing from several active mines in this area. As long as we keep Sakuya under control, the village promised not to put her down. Miyu was a good family friend of ours… I couldn't just let that happen, so we've been doing this ever since the war ended."

That… was actually really sad. These two actually didn't seem all that bad. Kazuto was earnest and forthright, and Junichi had the air of a man acting more out of jaded distrust than inherent maliciousness. I might even classify them as nice—one's personality as a ninja, after all, was vastly different from one's personality as a person. With that said, though, it was also _quite_ a story…

"You don't have to believe us," Junichi said, as if sensing my doubt. "Kazuto is a fool to expect your help. I've tried and failed to convince my comrades to aid us—there's no way some Leaf shinobi just would lend us a hand. I resolved long ago to find a way to save Sakuya on my own."

"I'll check it out," a voice behind me said.

When I turned around, Kakashi was standing there with his arms crossed, Pakkun sitting on his shoulder. He was eyeing Junichi with an inscrutable expression, back to his usual aloof self.

"Kakashi…"

"It's nothing a shadow clone can't handle," he muttered to me under his breath. "If they're telling the truth, the situation changes greatly. We need more information before we act."

For a moment, we both stood there in silence, not awkwardly but not comfortably either. I suddenly found myself feeling the weight of the previous night's events; I grimaced and began massaging an ache in my neck.

"We'll speak to you again later," Kakashi addressed the Akiyama brothers, walking forward and dropping blankets on their prone forms. Then he came back, put a hand between my shoulders, and gently shoved me into the house, pulling the veranda door shut behind him.

"You should probably sleep," he said once we were standing together in the room, tugging the wires I hadn't realized I was still holding onto from my hand. He examined them briefly, taking in the blood drying on them, before going over to the door and dropping them in the wastebasket. "I can tell you're overwrought."

"Kakashi," I said again, this time a bit dumbly. "But… are you…"

"I'm fine," he assured me. "You really should sleep. Go on."

I stared at him for a moment longer, wondering if I should be suspicious over his insistence. Then I turned away and shrugged, flopping onto the futon behind me and letting out a long sigh. If he was making me go to bed, I wasn't about to argue. We'd been awake for well over twenty-four hours by now.

"Otsukare," he murmured as he left the room.

* * *

**A/N: Happy New Year's, everyone!**

**Not much to say this time. Please give your feedback, though. I feel kind of uncertain about this chapter. There was a lot going on.**

**EDIT: I lied. I forgot to add that Glory now has a TVTropes page! Link in profile.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	20. Age 12: Sakuya: Part 5

**Published: 1/28/2015**

* * *

**Age 12: Part 7**

"_What do you suppose happened to Junichi after that?"_

"_Likely he just went home. I don't think he committed suicide, if that's what you're asking."_

"_...I don't really have any solid proof for it, but I think you're right. He didn't kill himself, not after that. I don't think he could have."_

* * *

"Suzu."

"Buh?" I snorted, jerking my head up. I immediately felt stiff and dry all over, having fallen asleep in my day clothes, and it took me a moment to realize that I was staring down at a pillow. I spent a few dazed seconds staring at it before turning my head toward the door, where Kakashi was standing, hands in his pockets. His shoulders were rounded and weary, and even his eye was drooping. Through the haze covering my mind, I was struck with the thought he looked shockingly similar to the Kakashi of the series, though for all the wrong reasons.

"Sorry to wake you," he apologized, "but we need to talk."

I groaned, groggily rolling over and rubbing my eyes. They felt dry and heavy, like I'd been staring without blinking into an electric fan, and for a few minutes I just shut them again and laid there, drifting in that strange twilight people call the edge of sleep. Even the knowledge that my teammate was trying to talk to me about something important wasn't enough to stir me into coherence. I found myself thinking, in that moment, that I could have probably slept all the way until the Second Coming of Christ.

Damn, I hadn't had an adrenaline crash this bad in years.

"Are you sick?" Kakashi wondered. The sound of bare feet ghosting across the floor met my ears before I felt his presence settle next to the futon.

"Nghh," was my eloquent reply. Laboriously, I forced my eyes open and was greeted with the sight of my teammate leaning over me curiously.

"Is it about the mission?" I grumbled, dragging a hand over my face and grimacing.

"It is," Kakashi confirmed. With great difficulty, I dragged myself into an upright position, grimacing as my back made several popping noises. I rolled my shoulders and sighed before looking expectantly my mission partner's masked face.

"The clone I sent to the cliffs dispelled," he told me. "They're telling the truth. The last thing it saw before it was destroyed really was a giant mole."

I scratched my head. "Well… we'd better do something, then. I don't want that thing going berserk so close to the village. Has Kubo said anything?"

"Only that he wants no part of any ninja grudges," Kakashi replied, gaze shifting to the left a bit. "The villagers were not pleased to learn he has been harboring shinobi in his house. They didn't take to being deceived by us very well at all, either. Kubo has requested we finish our business promptly so he may pay us and send us on our way."

I found myself wincing in empathy. Kubo… what a rough break. It was rude to essentially tell us to hurry up and get out, but I found myself unable to resent him for it. Dealing first with financial pressure when the thefts had started, then with the stress of concealing us from the village as a whole, and now the fallout of that deception… it was no wonder he wanted us gone. Our presence here would only continue to complicate things for him.

"Did he say anything about the Akiyama brothers?" I questioned, glancing at the veranda doors. "Is he going to press charges against Iwa?" He could do so, after all, if he wished to; he only had to petition Fire Country's court. I doubted the case would make it to the daimyo's direct attention, but as a Hidden Village, Konoha did offer its clients a way into the international justice system. Neverminding that the "justice system" itself was just a more complicated web of politics, it was very possible for him to attain retribution if he wanted it. I had little doubt someone would take the chance to try and strike a blow at Iwa by concocting some slander campaign about how its shinobi stole from innocent civilians. And if that happened, it was no mystery whose heads would be on the Hidden Rock's chopping block. Iwa has sent its own ninjas to death for less.

"He'd like to wash his hands of any involvement with them," Kakashi shrugged.

Well, that was probably the more prudent move. Ninja politics was a cutthroat business; Kubo would only suffer more if he tried to get involved.

"We're free to do with them as we see fit, then?" I asked, feeling more than a bit troubled. My first thought had been to take them to the village, but I knew if I did that it would become a headache of matters well beyond my purview. Given the current situation, I did not want to be heaping the pressure of holding two Rock-nin as prisoners onto the village; opening up international issues now would be disastrous. Not only would it distract Minato from his preparations for the Kyuubi attack, but when word got out that there had been a domestic attack on Konoha, all it would take was one bitter Iwa veteran to make the Akiyama brothers into an excuse for military conflict. But on the other hand, just letting them go would have political implications of its own, and God forbid we somehow end up fighting and killing them. After all, if Junichi was as determined to protect Sakuya as I thought he was, I wouldn't put it past him to try killing Kakashi and me if he decided we were becoming too much of an obstacle.

Jesus Christ, I thought, rubbing my temples. This was supposed to have been a simple mission. Damn it, why was I the one making these decisions? I was a goddamned _twelve-year-old_.

Still, asking why wouldn't solve the problem. Something had to be done…

First off, we would have to avoid conflict with the Akiyama brothers by all means possible—Junichi knew we were in a precarious situation, and it would be all too easy for him to use a potential political explosion as leverage. We had to make sure to keep him appeased somehow, so he wouldn't think it necessary… but appeasement in itself was always a risky business. Give too little and nothing is solved, but give too much and he gains the upper hand.

I decided right then and there that I hated power struggles with every fiber of my being.

"Our first order of business is going to have to be Sakuya," I finally sighed aloud to the patiently waiting Kakashi. Somewhere along the way, it seemed, he had decided he was putting me in charge of decision-making. I guess it made sense, considering his whole episode at the mines; even if this wasn't Kakashi and I had been working with some other jounin I didn't know, I would still be expected to take the reins after an incident like that. Not that that made me feel any better.

"I agree," he murmured. "If we can resolve this issue, we can prevent Junichi from taking drastic actions while simultaneously assuring the village is safe. She is the root of this problem."

"I guess we're about to go pay the giant summon a visit," I muttered. "We're going to need ore…"

"If it were up to him, Kubo might just hand some over, but the villagers will never allow that," Kakashi said ruefully.

I sighed again. "We'll pay them. We have enough discretionary funds for it."

Neverminding the fact that after this our budget was going to be shot. God, I hate this.

* * *

"I will warn you now that this fuuinjutsu is the work of the Fourth Hokage himself," I said sternly to Junichi as I pressed my palm against the back of his neck, putting down one of my touchseals. "No funny business you try will be enough to work around it. The only way it's coming off without my say is when your head separates from your body."

"For such a tiny kid, you've got an iron fist," Junichi commented in reply, features twisting downwards as he prodded at the seal on his skin. "Ruthlessness must run in your family. I shudder to think of what the Yellow Flash does at home, to produce students like you two."

"You'd be surprised," I said, standing up and brushing my knees off. Kazuto had already received his leash and was now standing off to the side, rubbing his chafed wrists as Kakashi cut his bindings off. "Contrary to popular belief, he's not a complete monster. There's no older brother in the world better than Minato Namikaze."

Junichi just snorted. "If Kazuto said the same thing about me, would you believe it?" He glanced at his younger brother, who winced before sinking into a bow.

"I'm sorry, Misuzu-san," he muttered. "He's not always this rude. It's just…"

"We're Leaf ninja. I get it," I assured him, smiling a bit wanly. "It's fine. And who knows, maybe he _is_ the best big brother in the world. Just not in mine."

Because after all, we were all living in different worlds. The fact that we came from different villages only served to make that separation of realities more pronounced.

There was a moment of silence. Junichi and Kazuto exchanged inscrutable looks before both looking away in opposite directions. We all stood still a second longer before turning and making for the exit of the yard, knowing where it was we had to go. Kakashi had already retrieved the ore and had it stored in a scroll; I internally lamented the newfound lightness of our wallet.

"...Thank you for letting us go see Sakuya," Kazuto said hesitantly as we began walking through the village. Several people darted indoors at the sight of us; those who didn't either glared openly or just watched us warily. "I… it's not good to leave her alone too long. She's… um, she's hurt a lot of people like that."

"It fits with our agenda," Kakashi replied impartially, as aloof as ever. "We have no wish for the villagers to get hurt. We accomplish more by cooperating on this matter."

So don't even think of getting chummy with us, I mentally completed for him. No… even though he was polite, Kazuto could do nothing to endear himself to Kakashi now.

"Tell me more about your Hokage," Junichi said abruptly, cutting any further response from his brother off. We exited the village and began walking south.

"What do you want to know?" I asked amiably, though within I felt my heart hit the roof of my mouth. Kakashi's eye narrowed.

"You said he's a good elder brother. What does he do?" Junichi asked, staring intently at me.

For a moment, I wondered if I would regret letting him know that there were a bunch of young children living in Konoha who would make great hostages if anyone cared to try and get back Minato for something. But then again, they had targets large enough on their backs just by bearing the name Namikaze. And Junichi wouldn't be seeing Konoha anytime soon anyway.

"He plays with us all the time," I said after a moment. "All of us, even though there are so many of us. He always thinks about us. When he had still been fighting on the front lines he'd sent us presents and letters. He helps us train and listens to our problems when we need advice no matter how busy he gets."

Junichi was silent for a moment. Then he harrumpthed and crossed his arms.

"Brothers all over the continent do those things," he declared, unimpressed. "We have those types in Iwa, too."

"I never said you didn't," I pointed out as coolly as possible. Getting defensive over Minato's honor as an older brother will accomplish nothing, Suzu... be calm.

"But more than one Konoha ninja has called the people of my village _complete monsters_, as you so aptly put it," Junichi replied. "If being a good brother absolves the Flash of such a moniker, why do we still carry it?"

Of _course _this guy would be trying to play mind games right now. I resisted the urge to let out a long, loud sigh. Junichi Akiyama was a true ninja if I ever saw one, if only for the fact that he never let up.

"That's not for me to say," I said instead, lifting my eyes up to the heavens. "I can't tell you why people label other people as they do. I only know that my brother loves and is loved, and that that's enough to make people fight for him. Whether he's a monster or not means nothing to the people close to him. It's like that with anyone." I glanced at him sidelong.

Kazuto regarded me solemnly from Junichi's side, the glint of understanding alight in his eye. Silently, I wondered what he thought about all of this. He was so totally eclipsed by Junichi's shadow—literally and figuratively—that it was pretty much impossible to get a read on him.

"So you don't deny your Hokage is a monster, then?" Junichi raised an eyebrow, drawing my attention back.

"I don't know," I shrugged then, looking away to the ground. I had nothing witty to say on this subject. "I… just love him. That's it."

"Interesting," Junichi mused. For a moment, he almost looked thoughtful, like he was considering something he'd never considered before. But soon enough it was gone, concealed behind a tiny sneer. "It's just like a tree-hugger to do things without thinking because of her sappy _feelings_," he denigrated, turning his nose up. "Whether you deny it or not, though, I'll say this: loved or not, monsters are monsters still."

I only frowned and wondered—not for the first or last time—why everyone I met these days was so good at throwing on the layers. Kazuto wound his fingers together and sighed.

* * *

Do you remember how, early on in the anime, Kakashi had watched Zabuza run to his death without saying a word? The way that he had stared, unblinking as the Demon of the Mist charged through a crowd of thugs to kill Gatou, knowing he would die doing it? I do. And it was during this mission that I had learned _why_.

"Damn," I whistled quietly, putting a hand on the back of my head as I craned my neck upwards, searching for a face on the giant lump of brown fur splayed out before me. "She's huge."

"Not as big as Gamabunta-sama," Kakashi was quick to say.

"Probably not. But she's still big."

Sakuya had been a fright when we'd first arrived. Junichi had sent the ore down with a mud clone and what had followed had been ten minutes of pure terror; the ground had erupted in an explosion of rocks and dirt and dust, and the shaking had been so violent that part of the cliffs farther down the ravine had completely collapsed, throwing even more dirt into the air. I admit to having squeaked and latched onto Kakashi in a panic, but in my defense, he had clutched my arm just as tightly as I had his.

We'd only gotten a glance of her in the chaos of it all, but now I knew exactly what people meant when they said "carnal desire." She was _wild_.

"I understand now why the villagers are afraid of this place," I commented, wincing a bit at the memory of it. "I wonder how a person could die with this thing at her side..."

"Miyu thought like that too," Junichi put in then, sounding a bit bitter. "She let it get to her head. And she paid the price for it."

Startled—I hadn't thought he'd say that about someone he'd called a close friend—I looked to Kakashi, who furrowed his brow but otherwise gave no reaction.

"Oniisama," Kazuto said suddenly. He was standing a little ways away, staring glassy-eyed at the giant mole groggily twitching just a few feet away. Everything on his face was creased downward, from his forehead to his eyebrows to his cheeks and the corners of his lips. "Why do people do things even when they know they'll die?"

Junichi sighed and put a hand on the back of his head, looking up at Sakuya with a tired grimace. I didn't blame him—that was a heavy question. "Because sometimes they need to die to do the things worth doing," he replied a bit distantly. "I don't think Miyu intended to go here, though. She hadn't even thought of the possibility."

"...But what if she had?" Kazuto whispered, scrunching up his nose and squinting, trying hard to keep the tears from escaping his eyes. Kakashi and I looked on noiselessly, unwilling to interrupt the moment. Everyone deserved to grieve their losses, Iwa ninja or not.

"What if she had?" Junichi repeated questioningly.

"What's if she'd known she was going to die and she'd gone to battle anyway?" Kazuto clarified, hastily clearing his throat and rubbing his eyes. "What if… what if she'd gone in knowing she was committing suicide?"

Junichi was quiet for a moment, expression pensive. For a few minutes, they only stood there and stared, looking up at Sakuya with faraway eyes. I wondered how she had looked, beside the distant Miyu-san of the past.

"I would have watched her go," Junichi finally replied, "and I would have remembered. I would have watched her walk every step of the way and I would have memorized every moment of it. When someone makes a sacrifice as big as a life, Kazuto, you must always remember it. Watch it and never look away."

Kazuto's fists clenched. His brow furrowed further and his shoulders hunched up as he drew a deep breath. Junichi let out a short exhalation before clapping his brother on the back and turning away busily, beginning to make some hand seals.

"Stay here while I go fortify the roof of the cavern," he ordered all three of us, keeping his head tilted away. Normally I'd have been suspicious of that statement, delivered as it was with such an avoidant behavior, but it was easy to tell he didn't want us to see the emotion on his face. Besides, what could he do to this cavern without collapsing it on us all? Even Sakuya would die, no matter how huge she was.

"Alright, Kazuto?" I asked instead as Junichi quickly hopped over one of the giant mole's oversized paws, disappearing out of our sight. He was shaking now, knuckles snow-white.

"I'm only thirteen," he croaked, voice thick with emotion. "I'm only thirteen, Misuzu-san…"

Before I could help it, Yoshiya's face flashed in my mind. Nine. He had been nine, and so had I. I felt my lips begin to twist in a scoff, but then I stopped it. What was four years? No one deserved that kind of suffering at any age anyway.

"It'll get better," I tried to say, but Kazuto just turned away and began shaking his head.

"Even a great ninja can break when someone close to him dies," he told me, voice muffled as he wiped his face with the front of his shirt. "I don't want that to happen to him."

Was he talking about his brother? I tilted my head. "...Junichi's pretty tough," I said after a moment. It was sweet of him to worry. I wonder why I never did that. I'd never worried about Minato breaking before… "I'm sure it'll be fine."

I received no reply. Awkward silence filled the air, broken only when Junichi reemerged from the depths of the cavern.

"Let's go," he said, brushing some dirt off of his sleeves. "I've erected an Earth Wall that should hold this place until she starts thrashing again."

"We'll head back to the village, then," Kakashi murmured. "We still have a lot to do."

"That we do," I sighed, turning toward the entrance. Junichi made to follow, but Kazuto remained where he was, staring down at the ground next to Sakuya. Junichi frowned.

"Come on, Kazuto," he summoned, making a beckoning motion.

"Go on ahead," Kazuto mumbled at his shoes. "I… want a moment to myself."

I would have hesitated to leave Junichi behind on his own, but I wasn't nearly as wary of Kazuto. I nodded my assent when my companions glanced at me, and we climbed our way back up to the surface without him.

"I worry about that kid sometimes," Junichi muttered aloud when we came to the stop at the mouth of the cave. "He's too soft."

"I know that feeling," Kakashi agreed, much to my surprise. I blinked at him. Then I frowned.

"Are you trying to say something?" I demanded, knowing exactly who he was referring to. It wasn't like he had many other friends besides me he could consider wimpish.

Kakashi made to reply, but he never got the chance, for at that moment the earth below us began to rumble. For a split second, there was stunned silence; then Junichi swore.

"I _just _reinforced this place!" he shouted, diving back down the way before we could stop him. Kakashi and I both sprang after him, dropping curses of our own. Junichi was as fast as a bullet, though; he was already panting at the mouth of the cavern entrance by the time we reached him.

"Kazuto!" he yelled to his brother, who was drawing his fingers across Sakuya's coat. His right hand was twisted into one half of a hand seal. Junichi saw it and froze.

"...Kazuto?" he asked, looking stricken for the first time since we'd met him. Kazuto slowly turned to face us, tears streaming down his cheeks.

"We can't go on like this, oniisama," he choked out, shoulders shaking. "You know we can't. There's only one thing left to do now."

"Kazuto?" Junichi repeated dumbly. "What… what are you saying? What have you _done?_"

"I thought stealing the ore would work," Kazuto hiccuped. "I only did it because I thought it would help. But it's been so long and nothing has happened. It's already been a year since Miyu-san died, oniisama. We've tried everything. We can't save Sakuya."

"Don't be ridiculous, Kazuto!" Junichi barked, rage immediately springing up to his face. "I _told _you we would find a way! How _dare_ you do something like this—"

"Loved or not, monsters are still monsters!" Kazuto screamed, cutting him off. "You said it yourself on the way here! Sakuya isn't a summon anymore, no matter how much you care! I've seen her and now she's nothing more than a mindless animal! No matter what you say, she was gone the minute Miyu-san died!"

Panting, Kazuto turned away and buried his face in the limp mole's fur. "I can't let her go on like this, oniisama," he rasped, voice barely audible over the rumbling all around us. "She can't keep hurting herself and others."

"Suzu!" Kakashi hissed, grabbing me by the arm and yanking me out of my horrified stupor. I suddenly became aware of the fact that pebbles were now falling from the ceiling, tiny streams of dirt beginning to pour from cracks in the stone all around us.

"We have to go," I shouted over the din as Kakashi grabbed Junichi's arm as well. The Iwa jounin immediately jerked away.

"Kazuto, let's go!" Junichi yelled for his brother, straining against Kakashi's iron grip. Kazuto refused to move, standing rooted to his spot. "Damn it, let me _go_! _Fuck!_ Kazuto, get over here—! _Now—!"_

The world began to crumble. Kakashi and I both exchanged looks before I seized Junichi by the other arm. Then we turned and hauled ass back up to the surface, dragging him struggling the whole way. Kazuto watched us go with one hand fisted in Sakuya's side, fingers still fixed in that half a hand seal.

"Kazuto!" Junichi roared as we sprinted away, writhing in a vain attempt to break free. "Kazuto! _Kazuto!_"

We didn't stop until we were up on the cliffs overlooking the ravine, far from Sakuya's cavern. Only then did we turn back around and stare as the gorge before us buckled and folded in upon itself. A sound like distant thunder clamored in our ears as it disintegrated; a minute later there was nothing left but sunken hole full of rocks.

* * *

Only one thing is enough to make someone stand by and do nothing as a man brings down his own death on his head. It's not something very easily put into words. But it was the something Kazuto had had when he'd knocked down his brother's Earth Wall. That thing that transcends all other purpose, making even life irrelevant. It was a determination so strong that it would be sin to try and stop it.

What's the word for the look on someone's face as he kills himself for some irrevocable, immutable purpose? I wasn't sure there was one. Even today, I still don't know it. I only know now what one man—one jounin, one enemy, one older brother from a different world—had told us, years ago on a mission in some obscure village in the middle of nowhere.

Sacrifices as big as lives are not something to be forgotten.

Why did Kakashi stand by and do nothing when Zabuza had thrown himself into his death? I can only imagine it was the memory of Kazuto bidding him to watch and remember.

* * *

**A/N: When I watched the Land of Waves arc again, I was really affected by the way that Kakashi had told Naruto to not look away as Zabuza had died. In particular the fact that you see him staring with his good eye closed, using only the Sharingan—making it so that he would remember it in perfect detail forever—that really struck me. I figure that was just meant to establish the fact that he was a grizzled veteran who was already well aware of the gruesome ends awaiting the shinobi of the world, but I couldn't help wondering what exactly had happened to make him see that. Thus, Kazuto was born.**

**But, well, what do you think? Did Kazuto have to kill Sakuya? **_**Should **_**he have killed Sakuya? Or should he have done something more before resorting to that? Kakashi and Suzu never get to see the full picture, so it's a pretty ambiguous situation. **

**But I think ninjas come across that sort of thing all the time. Do you?**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	21. Age 12: Sakuya: Part 6

**Published: 2/28/2015**

**Edited 3/26/2015 for lots of little edits.**

* * *

**Age 12: Part 8**

_"If I'd known you'd been in the bath, I would've just gone up to talk to you! Damn."_

"_Jiraiya-sama, I would appreciate it if you recalled she had been twelve years old at the time. Also, please keep your hands off of my wife_."

"_Boo! Boring. Married women are twice the fun! Besides, just look at that behind. You can't keep her all to yourself!"_

_"_My _wife, sir.__"_

"_I think he's getting ready to castrate you, Jiraiya-sama. Look, he's reaching for his ninjato."_

"_Tch! You two are so uptight. You suck the fun right out of everything."_

* * *

Junichi wouldn't let us help him look for his brother's body. When we had gone back to the valley the next morning—he'd refused to move following the aftermath of the cave-in, so we'd simply left him there for the night—and found him using Earth Release techniques to turn over rubble, Kakashi had jumped down to help him; Junichi's response had been to hurl a tanto (decidedly _not _a throwing weapon) at my teammate's face. We kept a distance after that.

Looking on from afar, though, made things a bit easier to watch when Kazuto's corpse was finally unearthed. After a few hours of searching and liberal abuse of soldier pills, Junichi recovered a mangled, bloody, vaguely humanoid lump of flesh from beneath a set of boulders. He also ran about two hundred feet to the left and spent a full minute chucking cookies after finding it. I doubted they were many sights more gruesome. Even now, after over a decade has passed and I have worked for many years as a jounin, I still can't think of many cases to match it.

After that, Junichi sealed his brother into a black scroll and vanished from our sights forever. No looking back, or even acknowledging that we'd been there. He'd simply shunshin-ed away into nonexistence, and we never saw or spoke to him again.

There was nothing to do after that but collect our pay and head home.

It was surprising how little one can say in four days of travel. Kakashi and I mostly only spoke to check on each other, to confer on where to set up camp, or to confirm what direction we were heading in. There were a few times we haltingly tried to speak of Sakuya and the Akiyama brothers, but in the end we always trailed off and ended up looking away. I suspected that even Kakashi—who had doubtlessly seen many more things horrifying on the battlefield than I had, if only for the fact that he was older—had not experienced a mission like this one before.

When we arrived back at our home village, we were given a warm "Welcome home!" at the gate by a spritely-looking genin and her teammates. I managed a fairly normal "thanks," in reply, but Kakashi didn't even bother. We went to the Academy and reported our return to a chuunin and the Missions Desk; after being charged with submitting a report by the end of the week, we quietly parted ways beneath the tree with the swing. I suspected Kakashi went straight home to his apartment, but I found myself unwilling to return to the House right away, where my countless cousins would be rowdily bouncing all over the place. Somehow the idea of going back to so many… _siblings _seemed a little wrong.

I wandered the village instead, crossing my arms and sticking my fingers in my armpits to ward off the cold. For awhile I just looked around, watching my breath make tiny clouds of condensation while vaguely wondering if I should go to the Hokage's Office and check in with Minato about the Kyuubi attack preparations, or head to the hospital to visit Rin after being away so long. Since the mission had ended early, I had no pressing business to attend to.

An unfortunate state of affairs for a ninja with too much on her mind. Sighing, I eventually found myself ducking into a shop to get out of the frigid air. Then I found myself face-to-face with a man I had been avoiding for months.

"It seems like years of habit have brought you here while you weren't paying attention," Itsuki commented as I paled several shades. "I half-thought you'd kicked the bucket while you were gone, you know. What's it been, nine months? A year? Longer, maybe."

"I'll go now," I declared flatly, immediately backing away. "Sorry to bother you."

To my great surprise, Itsuki—who usually let me storm off in a huff whenever I was so inclined—moved forward and blocked my exit, shifting the basket in his hands under one arm so he could extend the other in front of me.

"Let's talk," he said cordially. Blankly, I stared at him; he stared back.

"…Alright," I finally sighed, turning away and searching for my stool. I found it tucked away between a crate of tangerines and a wall.

"You've changed a lot," Itsuki observed as I dragged it over to the counter, seated myself, and broodingly turned my head away to stare at the people passing by the shop windows. "You're taller. More sullen, too."

"Guess a lot has happened," I mumbled at him.

"You've risen in infamy as of late," my fruit-peddling friend noted, seating himself behind the counter and propping his head up with his arm. "You're in the international Bingo Book now. You've got a battlefield moniker and everything."

"Yeah, I guess." I found myself wondering how our mission would have ended had Junichi not known who I was. Would he have been able to guess Kakashi's identity? Would the Chidori incident have even happened at all?

"I get guys from the Tower in here every now at then," Itsuki doggedly continued. "They've mentioned that a _Misuzu-sama _spends a lot of time visiting the Hokage."

Were people calling me that now? I guess it made sense. People did often attach large honorifics to people who associated closely with the Hokage.

"They say you've formed a coalition with the famous Kakashi Hatake."

"Kakashi's my teammate," I absently replied. "It's only natural we work as partners on missions."

"Gods above, you've gone completely flat," Itsuki finally exclaimed, disbelief on his face. "What's happened with you? You're like the one old man who sits in the corner of the bar and drinks all day."

What indeed? From battlefield massacres to confinement in the psych ward to some distant corner of Earth Country, watching teenage boys end up as bloody boulder-pureed pulp. What _has _happened to my life lately?

"Puree pulp—" Itsuki said, aghast. "—did you say _psych ward?_"

That time it only took me a second for me to figure out I'd been thinking aloud again. I dropped my head onto the counter with a thunk. "I guess I did."

"When the hell did that happen?" Itsuki demanded, leaning forward.

"Probably about a week or so after I flipped out at you," I said tiredly. "It's all fine, though. Things mostly worked out in the end…"

"What happened? Are you okay?" he asked in a rush, prodding at me with unconcealed horror. "Are you on watch now? Is everything alright?"

"I had an episode and I killed a bunch of Iwa ninja," I mumbled into the wood. "But I've been declared fit for duty. Everything's fine."

Well, if this past mission could be considered _fine_, anyway. But it was all relative, though, wasn't it? That sort of thing happened all the time when it came to ninja. As far as we Konoha ninja are concerned, it _was _fine. The situation resolved itself without any political fallout. No one in this village would weep for some Iwa jounin and his dead baby brother. Not even me—I hadn't shed a single tear. I hadn't known him and he hadn't really known me. Before, I might have been moved by Kazuto's death… but now, I found that I was unable cry for these strangers. It just wasn't in me.

And that was just the way things were, wasn't it?

"Sorry for going nuts last time," I sighed, drawing myself up and sliding off of the stool. "You didn't deserve that. Anyway, I think I'm going to head home… I just got back from out of the country."

I couldn't avoid returning to the House forever, anyway. I turned to go, but Itsuki caught me by the wrist before I could get too far.

"Do you need to talk about it?" he asked softly, concern plain on his face. For a brief moment, I was silent. How easily months of avoidance were forgotten? Itsuki really was a good guy.

But I still found myself shaking my head. Some things, I decided, didn't need to be shared.

Maybe now was the time to stop running to others when something was bothering me. Maybe now was the time to learn how to settle my own problems.

"Thanks," I said, surprising myself with how warm a smile I could produce. "But… I think it's alright."

Maybe now was the time to grow up, if only a little bit.

* * *

Uncle Souhei was out when I got home and Auntie was already busy preparing dinner. If she had anything to say over the fact that I was back early (and what that implied about the mission—it usually wasn't good news when time frames shifted forward) it was drowned out in the myriad cries of several toddlers; the moment I stepped through the door Haruka and Kouji were hanging off of me like koalas, and Masahiko and Kaneko latched on to a leg each as soon as they were able.

So encumbered, I gruntingly waddled my way to the living room, where I was forced to pry each of them off and toss them one at a time onto the couch.

"Wait, wait, wait," I panted, holding up a hand as they went to jump on me again, giggling with the kind of joy that can only be derived from an elder sister's suffering. "At least let me go take a bath before you start. If we keep on like this all my dirt will get on _you_." I would rather Auntie not poison my dinner—which was exactly what she was going to do when she finished cooking and found she had to wash _four _toddlers—before I had a chance to live at least a few years longer.

Thankfully, they let me be long enough for me to get up the stairs and into the bathroom. It was a large bathroom, with a layout a little bit like the kind one would find in public bathhouses; little wooden dividers were set up along the wall, each with its own faucet, so multiple people could clean themselves at once without having to wait. I jumped over to the first one in the row and peeled off my clothes before proceeding to scrub myself three times over. Four days of travel ensured a fair layer of grime had built up on my skin, so it was quite a relief to be clean again.

After washing and rinsing my hair twice, I happily went and dunked into the large _furo_ in the center of the room. If there was one thing to be enjoyed about Japanese bathing culture, it was definitely the fact that we got soak up to our shoulders in hot water every day. Of course, this being the House, peace could never last long without being interrupted.

"Suzu!" Jinta barged through the door. I shrieked and immediately chucked the nearest object—a small wooden tub—at his head before dropping to my chin the in the bathwater. He ducked, just barely avoiding it.

"This is the girls' bathroom, you ass!" I shrilled. "_Get out!_"

"Please, it's not like I've never seen you naked before," Jin retorted after confirming no more bath supplies were flying for his face. "We took baths together with all the time when we were little. Hell, I'm pretty sure Akira still goes in with everyone else in the evening after dinner."

Truthfully, it wasn't unheard of for kids our age to still take baths with their parents. Communal bathing in general was pretty standard here; it wasn't unusual for whole families to bathe together, if their tub was big enough. I myself had spent countless nights splashing around in this very _furo_ with my uncle and cousins. It was just the norm around here.

But that still didn't mean I wanted Jinta in here right now.

"What do you want?" I spat, glowering furiously. I silently resolved to throw baby powder all over his futon when I was done here. And maybe his clothes, too. In fact, I decided, I was going to dump a whole damn bottle in his underwear drawer as soon as I got the chance.

"There's some old guy downstairs asking for you," Jin informed, oblivious to the oncoming retribution. "I think Auntie knows him. He's got spiky white hair in a ponytail."

Spiky white hair in a ponytail? I blinked, rage temporarily forgotten. That sounded like…

"Jiraiya?" I asked. Jin snapped his fingers and nodded vigorously.

"Yeah, that's him. Jiraiya," he confirmed.

What was _Jiraiya_ doing at the House? Well, on second thought, if he was asking for me, there was really only one thing he _could _be here for.

"I'll be down in a minute," I said after a moment of thought. Then I remembered myself and immediately set to giving Jin the most KI-laden death glare I was capable of. He quickly scooted backwards and shut the door.

* * *

After braiding my hair and piling it into a side bun to keep it from dripping all over my back—there was so much of it now, it took a good three or four minutes to get it all to stay put—I threw on a fresh change of clothes and went downstairs. A bear of a man was waiting for me; his uncommon height was matched by a wide torso, making his overall appearance quite massive. I actually halted halfway down the stairs and just stared when I saw him, so startled was I to encounter a man of such size. It had been ages since I'd seen someone that big.

"Oh, there she is," Auntie said when she caught sight of me. She waved a hand and I hastened over. "Suzu, this is Jiraiya-sensei. He was Minato's jounin instructor."

"Hello," I greeted cautiously. Jiraiya regarded me with a look so piercing my breath hitched, but as soon as it was there, it was also gone; a giant grin spread across his face before I could blink.

"What, this is the kid that's been giving Minato so much trouble?" he asked, laughing loudly. "She's puny!"

...Well, _that _was a promising start. I tried to smooth the offense out of my expression.

"But talented," Auntie soothed me, picking up on my ire. "Are you going to stay for dinner, Sensei?" she quickly addressed the Sannin, who immediately began wiggling his eyebrows.

"Depends what's on the menu," he leered, eyeing the neckline of my aunt's blouse suggestively. Though Auntie gave no reaction, I felt my ears go red.

"Whatever it is, I'm sure it'll be to your liking, Jiraiya-sama," a voice from the doorway said dryly. "Reiko is an excellent cook."

"Souhei!" Auntie beamed at the sound of him, instantly darting forward to help my windswept uncle take off his coat. Face flushed with cold and glasses foggy, he smiled and kissed her on the forehead. Jiraiya made a gagging noise.

"Gross, never mind," he muttered. "I hate it when these two get all mushy," he whispered to me conspiratorially. "They were like that even when Minato was a kid. I thought it was just because they were newlyweds, but they still act disgustingly in love every time I see them."

"Um…" I said.

"Did you have business in my house, Jiraiya-sama?" Uncle Souhei interrupted him pleasantly. Too pleasantly. Jiraiya blanched.

"Uh, yeah, I was just gonna come and get your kid," he hastily replied, jerking a thumb at me. "Need to talk to her about something for Minato."

"I assume we're not welcome to listen, then?" Uncle raised an eyebrow. "Alright. I'd tell you to make sure to treat like her like the gentleman you are, but I know I don't need to. Right?" He gave him a pointed look.

I was impressed. Jiraiya was older, taller, and probably way stronger, but Uncle wasn't phased in the least.

"Right," the Sannin muttered before making a beckoning motion at me. "Come on, kid. Let's go take a walk."

He strode off and I was left to search for outdoors-wear. As I passed, Uncle Souhei put an absent hand on my head before quietly taking Auntie by the arm and saying something lowly in her ear, expression grave. Auntie Reiko's brow furrowed.

"You'd better go on, Suzu," she said when she caught me watching curiously. "It's rude to make people wait." She stared at me until I went to the door, so I had no choice to leave without knowing what was going on.

Jiraiya was indeed waiting for me, standing at the bottom of the porch's stairs. I quickly put my hood up to shield my wet hair from the cold wind before hurrying down. He nodded, and we we began to walk.

"...Uncle Souhei was really mad," I said to break the silence, once we were down the road and away from the House. "He's never like that unless he's pissed off."

Jiraiya's expression instantly soured. "I hate dealing with that man," he grumbled. "We've never gotten along. He just rubs me in all the wrong ways…"

"Maybe he was mad you were looking at Auntie like she was a piece of meat?" I wondered. Did Jiraiya and Uncle Souhei have a grudge going on or something? Obviously they knew each other, but that was probably to be expected. Minato had been a ward of the House like any of us, so if his teacher had ever needed to speak with his guardians, he'd have to go to Auntie and Uncle. Maybe something had happened when he'd been younger...

"Blah, he knows I wouldn't touch her," Jiraiya waved a hand, interrupting my train of thought. "I mean, I can enjoy the view, sure, but even I have to admit banging Minato's mom would be seriously weird."

Horrified, I screeched to a halt. _What_?

"What, are you bothered?" Jiraiya raised an eyebrow, looking at me over his shoulder. "Minato said you were older than he was. I didn't think you'd mind—he never seems to care." Jiraiya paused. "But then again, he's known me since he was ten…"

"That's _sick!_" I exclaimed, thoroughly repulsed. "The series always played your perviness for laughs, but I didn't think that you were really, actually, properly… _disgusting!_"

"Ah, I can tell you're going to grow up to be one of _those_ women," Jiraiya sighed, looking at me with a regretful gaze. "You don't hold anything back, do you?"

Suppressing a shudder that had nothing to do with the cold, I rubbed my arms and shook my head vigorously. Jiraiya shrugged his shoulders, and silence descended again.

"...What did Minato want you to talk to me about?" I asked after a long while, burying my nose in the folds of my scarf and shoving my hands in my pockets.

"What? Oh, that was a lie," Jiraiya replied, waving a dismissive hand. "Minato's been passed out on his desk for the past few hours now. I just needed an excuse to get you out of the house."

For the second time that evening, I found myself stopping where I stood. "Why did you need to do that?" I asked warily, suddenly finding myself with the vague wish for a rape whistle. Chakra began gathering my in palms of its own accord.

"To talk to you, of course. Minato told me all about you." He grinned. "It was ridiculous, frankly. If I didn't know enough time-space ninjutsu to justify the idea of alternate dimensions, I would have called him crazy. For a little bit I did, actually—I thought he'd finally snapped."

"Snap?" I repeated, incredulous. "Niichan? He wouldn't. He's the _Hokage_."

"Your point?" Jiraiya raised an eyebrow at me. "Even the Hokage is a person, after all, and you should know better than anyone how easy it is to for people to lose themselves in ninja work, what with your own stint in the pink ward."

I reddened, dubiety forgotten. "Did he tell you about that too?" I asked smally.

"Kid, please, I'm a shinobi," Jiraiya snorted, looking vaguely amused. "I don't need Minato's help to find that sort of thing out."

(Wait, did that mean Jiraiya found his way into my medical records? That was very illegal, even for a Sannin…)

"...But even so, Minato's not like me," I mumbled, looking away. "He doesn't struggle with that kind of thing; he's probably the most well-adjusted ninja I've ever met."

Jiraiya made a thoughtful noise. "Suppose it can't be helped that you think that," he said after a long moment. "Minato is very skilled in projecting perfection. He's been doing it since he was a child."

"What do you mean?" I asked, knitting my brows together. "I don't really think it's possible to fake being a good ninja without actually having the skills..."

"Oh, it's not a question of skill." Jiraiya shook his head. "Minato is a prodigy and a genius. He's got all the skill a man would ever need. I'm talking about his _personality_."

"...What do you mean?" I asked again. As far as I was concerned, Minato was the kindest shinobi in the village.

"I mean he's a massive faker," the Toad Sage rolled his eyes. "Do you seriously believe he's such a saint? What is he, twenty-four? Most old men are hard-pressed to tolerate as many clingy young children as he does. He's not nearly as patient as you believe he is. He's just good at hiding his temper."

Minato had a _temper_? I'd been under the impression he'd just been born without one. I didn't think he'd snapped at me once in my entire life. Well, except for that fight in the psych ward…

"Why would he be faking? What does he gain by acting?"

"Peace of mind," Jiraiya said simply. "Minato grew up being showered in praise. He's more dependent on it than you realize; he goes through all kinds emotional distress without it. So sometime during his childhood, he decided that the only way to avoid that instability was to be praiseworthy at all times. Ergo, he acts perfect." Jiraiya made a hand gesture. "You see? He is a skilled ninja, yes, but he has all standard issues, with the added benefit of a _ridiculous_ coping mechanism. Being the Hokage does not make him immune."

For a moment I could only stare. It had never occurred to me Minato might be so duplicitous. Did this mean that all of those days we spent at the House, all of us kids, hanging on his back and talking to him while he read books in the living room, asking him for help with homework or weapons practice… weren't real? Was the Minato we knew _fake?_

My mind immediately shunted the thought away, unwilling to consider it. "Why are you telling me this?" I asked instead, voice coming out high and tight.

"Oh, I thought you ought to know," Jiraiya said nonchalantly, as if he had not just taken my life's pedestal and smashed it into bits. "...Minato has been a bit… ah, _pressured_ lately, if you know what I mean. He might not be as pleasant as you're used to if you go and talk to him."

"Because of the… Kyuubi attack?" I found myself self-consciously dropping my voice, even though I could tell with chakra sense that no one was around to hear us.

"He's been having some friction with Kushina," Jiraiya nodded. "When I first arrived, we spent about an entire straight week in his office, figuring out the seal. He only went home to bathe and change clothes, and he skipped eating dinner with her about eighty percent of the time. She's also still pissed that he's willing to make their kid into a Jinchuuriki if it comes down to it, too, so…"

I put my head in my hands. "I thought I was saving his life by telling him about it, but I'm ruining his marriage instead," I groaned. "Does anything I do turn out right?"

"Melodramatic much," Jiraiya commented. "You sure think highly of yourself, kid. Are you really as big of a factor as you're making yourself out to be?"

I lowered my arms and scowled. "You sure know how to make a girl feel good about herself, old man. Are you sure you're a ninja and not a motivational speaker?"

"I just know how to tell it like it is," Jiraiya corrected primly. "And I am not old. I'm thirty-eight."

Wait, thirty-eight? I paused. Well, actually, that _did_ make sense. If he was fifty when Naruto was twelve, then of course he would be twelve years younger right now. It was still strange to hear, though.

"...You look really surprised," Jiraiya muttered, eye twitching. I stifled a giggle. He let out a huff and spun on his heel.

"Well, I've done what I've come for," he said. "Let's head back before that bastard Souhei decides to do something."

"Wait, you did?" I blinked, hurrying forward. Jiraiya had a ground eating stride; it took three steps to match one of his. We were across the road in no time.

"I told you I wanted to talk to you," Jiraiya pointed out. "I did. And I learned a lot. Mission accomplished."

"What, really? I think I learned more from this conversation than you did…"

"You can gain knowledge from more than just trading words," the Sannin replied evenly as we came to a stop at the House's front door. "You told me more than you might think."

I found myself staring up into the eyes of a different man at that moment. There was not a trace of his previous flippant rudeness in that gaze; it was only the inscrutable look of a shinobi.

"Was it good?" I asked softly, feeling suddenly anxious. He had been analyzing me this whole time, hadn't he? He'd been doing since I first came down and I was only realizing it now.

"Time will tell," he replied, tone equally quiet. "But until then… well, I'm sure we'll see each other again soon, Suzu Namikaze. Good night." He turned away.

I stood by the door for a long while, watching his back until it vanished into the night.

* * *

**A/N: Sorry for the wait! This chapter was a bit difficult. I had it mostly down about two weeks ago, but then I read it again and realize it was complete crap, so I scrapped it and started over. Even now I'm not really fully satisfied with this, especially with Jiraiya's scene, but I figured I should put it up now or else it'll never get done. I apologize if there are more typos than usual.**

**A lot of people seem to be wondering why Kazuto didn't run after knocking down the Earth Wall. A few have even told me his death didn't make sense. They all asked the same thing, though: "Why?"**

**I know why, of course. I even sent a PM or two disclosing the reasons. But then I realized that that's not the point. I'm not **_**supposed **_**to tell you all why. I'm supposed to let you all read the story, see my characters' thoughts and actions, think, and then decide for yourselves why. It's not literature if I just **_**tell **_**you. (It is, however, perfectly acceptable for you to tell me your interpretations in reviews and PMs! Just so you know.) So take a moment to ponder for yourselves the actions of Akiyama the younger. You might find something interesting.**

**Anyway, thank you all for your continued support!**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	22. Age 12: The Kyuubi Attack: Part 1

**Published: 3/5/2015**

**Edited: 3/26/2015**

* * *

**Age 12: Part 9**

_"Did you have to write that part in? You all promised to stop teasing me about it ages ago, but now you've gone and put in down in a book!"_

_"Aw, don't be like that. Besides, Kakashi wanted it in—he thought it was pretty hilarious after he got over himself. Would you really deny your one true love such a small pleasure?"_

_"Argh! Neechan! Stop it, please!"_

* * *

The following months flew by, but they were not without incident. As the peculiarly cold weather transitioned back into the usual Fire Country heat, several things ranging from odd to mildly horrible happened. To start with, Chiharu was lucky enough to be the first (well, excluding myself, but I could hardly be counted) of us girls to discover the joys of the menstrual cycle. This led to two subsequent talks, one from each of the House adults. Auntie Reiko's covered the pragmatic issues and was slightly uncomfortable, but tolerable. We could all handle practical advice from our mother figure. But as for the one from our resident doctor-medic… well, though he delivered an edifying lecture with unflinching professionalism, it was quite obvious from his fixed frown that he had been bullied into it by his wife, who likely couldn't have been bothered to explain so much about the mechanism of periods to a group of furiously blushing tween girls. Puberty in general began making a nuisance of itself after that, doubly so due our sheer numbers. I would relay the gruesome details of it, but that does not make for light reading.

In addition to that, people who recognized me from the Bingo Book began to stop me in the streets. Kakashi experienced it too. Random ninja, usually genin or Academy students, would suddenly come running up out of nowhere and begin expressing frankly embarrassing amounts of admiration. Though the older shinobi were generally more reserved about their praise when they bothered to give it, they would occasionally drop an approving word or two. Let me say nothing of the civilians, who, being Hidden Village residents, had none of the usual fear for speaking to shinobi to keep them from asking all sorts of curious questions.

On top of all that, I also began developing something that would quickly become the bane of my roommates: restless sleeping habits. Though I noticed no real change at all, except perhaps a somewhat increased recollection of vague and indecipherable dreams, I often woke to increasingly irate cousins, who claimed I kicked and rolled and fussed to unbearably annoying levels. I had no idea what was causing it, but eventually chalked it up anxiety about the now fast-approaching Kyuubi attack.

Though things had smoothened out considerably—the seal was configured, the defenses were fortified, and the relevant commanders and captains were informed that "top-secret intelligence" had revealed an assault on the village could be occurring soon—interpersonal relations in the need-to-know group were decidedly tense. Kushina and Minato were no longer outright arguing, but there was a certain edginess in their conversations that betrayed their contention. Interactions between myself and Jiraiya were decidedly awkward. I made every effort to avoid bumping into Kushina, and Minato…

Everything Minato did and said was suspect. Post my conversation with the Toad Sage, every smile he gave me, every welcoming wave or patient nod… I couldn't help but wonder about his true thoughts. Perhaps I was only seeing what I wanted to see, but little tics began to stand out to me: tiny downward twitches of the lips when I opened the office door, an extra set of blinks if I interrupted him while he was talking, quiet exhalations as I left. Though it wasn't unexpected, I also noted that the surge of attentiveness that had followed my discharge from the hospital had largely faded as well.

I spoke of my observations to Jiraiya only once. His reply? "Stress causes slip-ups."

Of course, Kakashi was blissfully unaware of everything. It had been decided early on that there was no need to let him in on the secret, and honestly, I agreed. There was no doubt he was trustworthy, but the less possible holes there were, the better. In fact, as far as he was concerned, this summer had possibly been the most peaceful one of his life.

After stopping by the House just once to confer with me on a mission report, he had been yanked inside for dinner and then forcibly admitted to the veranda bonding club, of which the chief activities were light conversation and the consumption of popsicles. And though I suspected it was his first experience of a large extended family—Minato had tried and failed to draw him into the House's special brand of hospitality before—he handled himself unexpectedly well under the attentions of my cousins. Despite the fact that he outstripped most of us in mental and physical skill, he enjoyed several intellectual debates, along with the occasional group spar in the yard.

Haruka became completely smitten with him. She began stealing strips of cloth from the sewing basket and fashioning masks out of them after his first visit; shortly thereafter she decided she wanted to marry him, much to poor Kakashi's horror. And though Auntie Reiko and Uncle Souhei were a bit leery of him at first, remembering tales of vicious bullying from my first days on Team 7, they warmed up to him soon enough, partly because of that.

From then on the end of each mission saw him over at the House, ostensibly to write reports with me. If he just so happened to end up playing with a couple of toddlers, well, he was only being polite. The fact that he clocked third place in number of popsicles consumed, right behind Tenrou and Akira, had nothing to do with anything.

But those days didn't last. Soon enough the end of summer faded into autumn, and the green of the trees bled into bright reds and yellows. Minato stopped assigning us missions when October rolled around.

And then the day of the tenth dawned.

* * *

If the civilians were worried about the sudden increase of heavily-geared shinobi roaming the village, they didn't voice their concerns. When a sudden lockdown drill was called, they didn't say much either. The usually lively streets went silent; instead the air filled with the dull thunder of a thousand ninja running on the rooftops. Members of the Barrier Corps were all over the place, and I saw several toads springing about, carrying stacks of sealing paper and dragging fat scrolls to every edge of the village. Genjutsu specialists began cropping up everywhere I looked, which made me think that someone somewhere had come up with a plan to mask preparations in case "the enemy" decided to do surveillance. Personally, I didn't think it would do much good, seeing as the person in question had a Sharingan and would be able to see right through it all if he bothered to look, but I certainly wasn't about to tell them to stop.

Though the stress shouldn't have really started until the evening, the morning brought troubles all of its own. After waking up and coming downstairs to find it packed with a crowd of ninja from the clan, it became immediately evident to me that there was an argument going in the corner. At first it was quiet, but it steadily grew louder and louder until nearly everyone, even the other clansmen, had to stop and watch.

"You know I can't do that, Reiko," Uncle Souhei was saying, gaze shifted away. Today he was wearing an unzipped jounin's vest, a sight unusual to my eyes; I hadn't even known he had one. "It's a matter of domestic defense. I don't have a choice."

"It's not fair," Auntie replied furiously, and tears began streaking down her face. The collective jaws of the House children dropped; in all of our years together, we'd never seen her cry. "We should be together. They shouldn't separate us."

"You know how valuable medics are," Uncle said gently. "It's bad enough I left the Forces at the age I did. In terms of educational investment, the village has lost revenue on me, you know. It's to be expected they mandate me back into the field for this at least."

"It's not fair," Auntie repeated, shoulders shaking. For a moment, the room was silent except for her hiccupping gasps. Then, with a sudden shout of rage, she whirled around and smashed her leg into the sitting room's coffee table.

Uncle Souhei, looking as if he had anticipated such an outburst, deftly dodged to the side as the table exploded into splinters. Pieces of wood flew in all directions; I gasped and ducked my head as a shard flew past and embedded itself in the wall behind me.

"Holy shit," Tenrou uttered. The visiting clansmen looked horrified.

"We've lost everything already!" Auntie Reiko screamed, and when I looked up, her hand was fisted in my uncle's shirt. "Our family! Our friends! Our careers! They've already taken everything from us! Why should I have to lose you, too? _Why should I?_"

"Calm down," Uncle Souhei murmured, hand closing around her wrist. "You're not losing anyone today. Nothing's even happened yet, and I won't die so easily. You know that."

"It doesn't matter!" she cried, wrenching her arm away. "Kazue said the same thing! Yasunari said the same thing! Those are liar's words, and you know it! Souhei—"

She was cut off as my uncle put a hand on the back of her head and pulled her into his chest, holding her there firmly and effectively muffling her. "Stop making such a scene, Reiko," he commanded grimly. "Get a hold of yourself. You're scaring the kids."

I looked around at the ashen faces of all my siblings. I was probably ten or twelve shades paler myself.

"I want to go with you," Auntie sobbed in reply, burying her face further into his shirt. "Let me fight with you. I can still be of use. Please, Souhei."

"You know you can't. Your taijutsu is good on its own, but it's not that good." Uncle Souhei sighed and rested his chin on top of her head. "You'd only get yourself killed, and then it won't be us saying 'We've lost everything' anymore. It'll just be _me_."

"I'm not a useless woman," Auntie wept, and for a moment, I wondered if she even knew who she was talking to anymore. "I'm not. I'm a Leaf shinobi. I'm Reiko Namikaze."

"I know, love," Uncle Souhei said quietly, voice finally cracking. "I know."

* * *

"You'd better head to the mountain with them," Uncle Souhei said as I stood silently at his side, watching my aunt lead my cousins down the road, to the lockdown shelters. The other clan members milled about around us; every now and then someone would come up and drop hand on on my uncle's shoulder, though no words were exchanged. "It was very clearly stated the ninja under age sixteen should evacuate as well."

"I have special dispensation," I lied blatantly, crossing my arms. Uncle Souhei shot me a look that clearly said he didn't buy a word of it, but he made no move to make me leave.

"It's been nearly fifteen years, you know," he sighed after a moment of silence. "We fought in the Second War, with Suna. We were in the first wave, the one that took the brunt of the Puppet Brigade. No one knew the countermeasures for the poison except for the medics."

"What?" I asked quietly, looking up at him.

"They were always developing new poisons, but we hadn't had the time to distribute information about the latest that time," Uncle clarified. "That one in particular was fatal unless treated and crippling if it was. It was how your parents died, and how Reiko lost her ability to mold chakra. It was the end of her career."

"Oh," I said. What other response was there?

"Twenty-four," Uncle Souhei mused. "Twenty-four when she retired. I left the Medical Corps a few months later, so I could take care of her." He sighed. "She wanted to kill herself, you know. Her parents and siblings had already died, her best friend was gone, her future as a shinobi was over… she didn't have much left at that point."

"What happened?" I asked, looking back down at my feet and wondering what part of the superwoman known as Reiko had been ready to commit suicide.

"I married her," Uncle shrugged. "I took her to Hayato, got her therapy, and when she improved, I made sure she'd never be able to think about killing herself again. She hated women who made widowers, you see—she always said it was a girl's job to let her husband go first." He chuckled suddenly. "'Men aren't tough enough to outlive their wives,' she always told us."

"That is just like her," I found myself laughing despite myself. "That is exactly something she would say."

Uncle Souhei smiled fondly. "It is. And eventually, when things smoothened out, she ended up taking over everything. We couldn't have kids, so she dragged me here instead, and now I'm stuck with more children than any sane man could possibly ever want." He rolled his eyes and gave me a long-suffering look. "Let me tell you, this has not been an easy marriage."

"But I never would have guessed it," I pointed out, looking at him quizzically now. "Jiraiya-sama was right, you know. You act like newlyweds. How can that be?"

For a moment, Uncle Souhei was silent. Then he said, "The first years were rough. You could say our marriage started backwards—the hard part came first. We're only just getting to our honeymoon now, I think." He shook his head. "And contrary to Jiraiya's belief, we had not been newlyweds when he met us. We only looked like it."

I made an impressed noise. Having grown up in a society where divorce was rampant, this kind of story was not one I had often heard. No one from my world would have married a girl with so much baggage, and not with that level of commitment.

"That's insane," I said softly, voicing my thoughts. "Any other man would have given up on a girl as broken as that."

"Not if he loved her," Uncle Souhei contradicted without any of his usual cynicism. "Not if he loved her right."

I had no response to that, so instead I looked away again. We stood for several minutes like that, unwilling to speak.

"You're not going to go the evac shelters," he finally said after a long moment. It was a statement, not a question.

"No, I'm not," I agreed. There was no point in hiding it anyway; he knew. But would he do anything about it?

"Don't get yourself killed," he sighed, which was answer enough. "You're Kazue's daughter. Your aunt's got a special place in her heart for you."

I pursed my lips. "I won't," I said.

"...I've got a spot for you too," he admitted after a beat. "Yasunari was my best friend as much as Kazue was hers. And unlike Reiko, I won't hesitate to admit I play favorites. I… would not like to lose you."

Water welled in my eyes. I spent a minute rapidly blinking, staring determinedly down the street.

"I won't," I managed to say again, keeping the tears from falling.

I didn't know myself how true those words would prove to be. But for more than just my own sake, I hoped they wouldn't be lies.

* * *

The hospital's high-security ward was even more tightly guarded than usual, which made sneaking in very, _very_ hard. I held in a frustrated breath and contemplated my next move. Getting into the same hallway as Rin's hospital room had been difficult enough, but with a stationary guard standing right at her door, I was out of options. Just walking by was obviously not going to work, and even if I could knock him out—which was doubtful—and slip inside, the second someone found an unconscious ANBU they'd turn over every inch of this hospital looking for the person responsible. I'd be discovered in a heartbeat.

There was nothing to be done. I sighed to myself, ever so quietly. Then I heard the rustle of cloth beside me.

Whipping my head around, I came face-to-face with a porcelain mask. There was ANBU standing beside me, hooded and cloaked and staring with an invisible gaze. His black overcoat dwarfed him; despite the fact that he was a good three inches taller than me, he looked quite small. In fact, he looked small enough to be my age.

My heart skipped a beat.

_No. Surely not._

Before I had a chance to blurt out a question and blow my cover, the ANBU silently removed himself from the wall and strode past me. I watched, wide-eyed, as he walked up to the guard and said something quietly, pointing down the hall in the direction opposite from me. A beat passed before the man moved away, and then suddenly we were alone.

I slowly poked my head around the corner. The ANBU quietly slid open the door to Rin's room. Then he turned to face me.

"Are you…?" I trailed softly, barely daring to whisper. "You're not… are you?"

I only received silence in response. Hesitating, I crept forward and stopped in front of him, searching the two dark holes in his mask for any hint of blue irises. For a moment, I thought I saw a flash of something, but I blinked and it was gone. There was nothing but blackness in his obscured gaze.

Feeling suddenly ill, I jerked away and darted inside, flinging the door shut as hard as I could without slamming it. Heart beating frantically, I pressed my back against the door and slowly slid down onto my behind.

What was _that_? That soulless look? I found myself shuddering violently. No. No way. That ANBU in the hallway was not my friend. That ninja was definitely someone else.

Taking a deep breath, I calmed myself and shoved the encounter from my mind. I would think about it later, after the attack had been dealt with. I pulled myself to my feet and went over to the single bed in the room, where Rin, still frozen in time, was lying.

I held in a grimace at the sight of her gaunt face. Not for the first time, I found myself doubting our plan. The point was to show Obito that Rin was still alive, but was this really what we wanted him to see? She was caked with seals: they were on her arms, her legs, on the bed and on her white hospital gown. I knew without looking that if I lifted up the front of it I would find a huge gaping hole in her chest.

"Rin," I sighed aloud, putting a hand on her arm. Instead of feeling warmth from her skin, there was only the buzz of the stasis chakra, keeping me from truly touching her at all. "We'll get help for you soon. We'll find Tsunade-sama as soon as we know the village is safe. I promise."

Of course, there was no reply. I sighed again before dropping to the floor and crawling into the crevice between the bed and the wall. The only thing left to do now was hide here until Minato managed to lure Obito over.

Making sure I was hidden beneath the white sheets hanging over the bed's side, I laid back and closed my eyes. I would have to keep my chakra pulled in to avoid detection from the guards outside, so it seemed like I was going chakra-blind for the time being. It was a somewhat unnerving feeling; as of late I had been so used to having my chakra sense on that I felt rather vulnerable without it, like someone could sneak up behind me at any moment.

Well, I thought ruefully as I stared up at the ceiling, at least I had plenty of thoughts to keep myself busy. Ignoring the nagging voice in my head that reminded me I was hiding under the almost-corpse of one of my dearest friends, I found my mind drifting to Auntie Reiko.

Shocking. That was the only word I could think of to describe it. I'd never seen Auntie fly off the handle like that over anything. Even when all of the House children had been out running missions in the middle of wartime, she hadn't acted like that. She was a level-headed woman, with no inclination to dramatics whatsoever. And yet the thought of Uncle Souhei being on active duty had been enough to send her into hysterics. She had smashed a table in _half_. She had broken down crying in front of a quarter of the clan. It was plain to see there was some major PTSD to be had there, but how was it she had never displayed any symptoms of it before now?

No, that was a silly thought. Of course she wouldn't let us see her like that. Uncle Souhei hadn't been wrong when he'd said she'd been scaring us: there was little else more frightening than the sight of one of your life's major constants having a complete meltdown. Even after braving the war and the battlefield, there was just something about having that kind of pillar in your life suddenly collapse in a wreck that put pure terror in your veins. There was no way she would have allowed us to see her like that if she could have helped it.

What kind of life had my aunt and uncle lived? I never would have guessed what little of it I knew now. Who else had they lost, and what other sacrifices had they made? What sides of them have the children of the House never seen? Would we ever know them at all?

Maybe not. I knew I wouldn't ask. History like that was private, even to us.

I sighed and put my arm over my eyes.

* * *

**A/N: This one is quite short, isn't it? I didn't want to jump into the actual attack and cut off at a weird place, though, so we kind of needed this chapter to prep for what's coming next. And besides, we got some nice insight into two of our more minor characters, so I'm pretty happy with this.**

**(Actually I'm just throwing around some blatant foreshadowing and setup for future plots and stuff, but sshh just pretend I'm a good writer with a competent grasp on subtlety. It'll make me feel much better about myself.)**

**To make up for the length of this one, though, I posted a little blurb to the Sidestories fic. It builds somewhat on the stuff Suzu learned from Souhei, though it's far more light-hearted and really only tangentially related. If I had wanted, I probably could have written that scene into the first section of this chapter, but it didn't really occur to me…**

**Anyway, thanks for your continued support, everyone. Happy reading!**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	23. Age 12: The Kyuubi Attack: Part 2

**Published: 4/9/2015**

* * *

**Age 12: Part 10**

"_Um, Obito…"_

"_...Yeah?"_

"_Before you threw me, why didn't you actually slit my throat? I know… I know I was definitely asking for it."_

"_Why? Even if you ask me… I don't know. I wasn't really with it when that all happened…"_

"_You're right. I'm s__orry…"_

"_Wait, no, don't be. It's just—argh, I don't know. I guess that... well, actually, I think might have I tried. But in the end, it was like you said. Rin was watching, so… I wasn't able to do it."_

* * *

They arrived in a storm of metal, kunai being deflected and clattering to the ground in all directions. Snapping awake from my half-doze, I quickly rolled over and peered out from beneath the bedspread, making sure to keep myself hidden from view. A wheeled cart flipped over and crashed into the ground as a tangle of cloaks suddenly came plummeting out of the thin air; I found myself unable to breathe as two figures immediately launched into a brief but brutal bout of taijutsu. Obito, who expected Minato's hits to phase through him, was very unpleasantly surprised when he found a foot smashing straight into his face. There was an audible crack as his mask split down the middle. The right half of it fell away, exposing one side of his face for the world to see.

"What did you do?" the teen half-gasped, half-spat as he found himself pinned to ground by the Fourth Hokage. His voice, which had been as high-pitched as my own last I had seen him, was jarringly deep—as deep as Kakashi's was now, or maybe even a partial lower. I belatedly realized that it had been over three years since we'd first met.

"I've teleported us," Minato replied, betraying nothing. I couldn't see his face from my angle, so I had no idea what his expression was wearing. "This room has been modified to negate all uses of space-time ninjutsu. Not even a sealing scroll would work if you tried to use it, let alone your technique Kamui."

The mechanism for that, I knew from several hours of camping in the Hokage's office, had been the work of one Jiraiya of the Sannin. As it turned out, he was even more skilled with barrier fuuinjutsu than Minato himself, whose focus was far more space-time heavy.

If I were in his place, I would be panicking hard, but Obito was completely collected. He didn't ask how Minato had known, or when he'd found the time to think up countermeasures. Instead, a small and overwhelmingly _Uchiha_ smirk immediately twisted on his lips. "So your greatest technique has been rendered useless now, too," he said shrewdly, single red eye glinting calculatingly. "You can no longer use Hiraishin to run."

I couldn't help it. A shudder crawled down my back.

"I don't need to run from you," Minato said, and though nothing outward about him suggested it, I found myself getting the feeling that he was starting to become unsettled, too. Well, considering how goofy and naive Obito had once been, this sudden appearance of a ruthlessly cold ninja was probably more than a bit disconcerting.

"It seems to me like you do," Obito replied, seeming to pick up on his unease as well and hastening to make use of it. He seemed to square his shoulders and straighten his back even though he was flat on the ground; I recognized a breaking speech in the works.

"You can't sway me no matter what you say, Obito," Minato informed, just about bleeding indifference. When he finally turned his head so I could see, though, months' worth of observing his tells allowed me to see that he was lying. It was in his eyebrows: he was shocked.

Well, I suppose now he was going to take all of my warnings seriously. Of course, he'd never plainly said to my face that he didn't believe me, but it had been obvious that he'd been harboring quite a bit of skepticism up until now.

"You were always like that," Obito commented with mocking blitheness. "Always out of the loop, living in your own world. You don't think that this isn't all your fault? What kind of teacher are you, letting your students go and kill each other? You're a failure, Minato Namikaze. You just refuse to accept it."

As expected, he was hitting where it hurt right off the bat. Until recently I wouldn't have worried over Minato hearing that sort of talk because I would have just assumed he'd brush it off as enemy mind games, but now… I wasn't so confident. Though it really was just Obito trying to mess with Minato's head, considering who this attack was coming from, it was doubly effective. If Minato was really as insecure as Jiraiya had suggested, he was suffering major damage already. And since he didn't have anyone else to be putting up and act for—after all, I was _not _supposed to be here right now—he had no motive for keeping a mask up.

"You should have been with them," Obito spat, reaching up and shoving his teacher in the shoulder. Minato jerked a bit with the force of it, but resolutely stayed upright, looking down at his former student with sad eyes.

"Obito…" Minato said quietly. "I couldn't have been. You really don't think I would have allowed this to happen if it had been in my power to stop, do you? I would never—"

"Shut up!" Obito snapped, losing his cool demeanor. He shoved Minato again, this time hard enough to throw Minato off balance. Our half-masked intruder jumped to his feet. "Shut up. I don't want to hear your excuses. No matter what you say, it doesn't change the facts. Rin is dead. Don't you understand? She's _dead!_"

I was not prepared in the least for the look of pure insanity that took over Obito's face as he snarled those words. Despite my extended stay under Hayato's care, I had never had the pleasure of coming across someone who was truly mad; since I'd been mostly confined to my own room, I hadn't met a single other "crazy person" while I was there. It took all the self-control I had not to squawk like a scared chicken. As it was, I broke out into cold sweat.

Minato was on his feet in a flash. "Obito, stop this," he said, voice taking on a pleading note as he grabbed his student's wrist. "What good will this all do? How will killing Kushina, taking the Kyuubi, and destroying your village bring you happiness? The only thing you'll do is spread the misery you're feeling right now."

"You will never understand," Obito replied coldly, snatching his hand away. "You who still have everything. A family, a lover, a village that adores you. You could _never _comprehend why I must take the Kyuubi from you. You don't know this kind of suffering."

Though this was no laughing matter, I found myself stifling a snort despite myself. I couldn't help it. It was all just so very… _Uchiha_. Anguished lamentation of a special kind of suffering that no one understands… as most people would put it, angst. Granted, the death of a loved on is no easy feat to endure, but… did this kind adolescent drama really have a place in such a huge conflict as this one, where thousands of lives—and, in the bigger picture, the fate of the shinobi world—hung in the balance? Sometimes it was hard to believe that such huge battles are born out of matters like these. After all, every ninja in the world has lost someone at some point. Obito's story was hardly outstanding.

But perhaps he was right. Perhaps it was the special Uchiha condition, that so-called Curse of Hatred, that put him on a level of suffering we couldn't comprehend. And besides, it was easy enough for me to look at him and scoff right now. My first real experience of a loved one's death—Yoshiya's death—had been nigh on three years ago, and I had the advantage of time and perspective to dull the pain of his loss. I really _didn't _know the suffering he was going through right now—even if I had experienced it, I had buried it and made sure to keep it as far from mind as I could. Most people coped that way.

I took a deep breath. Right. Becoming jaded and hardening your heart to other people's suffering… I couldn't do that. That sort of thing was the reason Obito was here right now, trying to unleash hell on us at this very moment.

"But that doesn't justify this, Obito," Minato told him, determined. "If I don't understand, you should explain it to me. How am I supposed to know if you don't try to tell me?"

"Shut up," Obito repeated, turning away. "Just shut up, Minato Namikaze."

Things continued like that for what seemed like hours, Minato attempting to reason and Obito shutting him down. It was like talking to a brick wall. I had no idea what he could do at this point. My cousin's lips thinned, and the room descended into heavy silence.

Obito's single red eye gazed angrily out into nothingness. My chest tightened.

This plan… did we stand a chance at all? At this rate, nothing would change. I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath.

"Don't act tough and hide your wounds."

Minato and Obito both spun around. Minato immediately looked to Rin's bed, eyes wide with disbelief. He recognized those words, I knew. As did Obito.

(I had spent a long time thinking on what to say to try and convince him. Everything I had come up with had sounded stupid and platitudinous. Only recently had I thought that maybe I should try to let Rin do the talking for me.)

Obito went as still as a statue when he saw the profile his beloved teammate on that bed.

"Rin?" he whispered.

"Don't act tough and hide your wounds," I repeated, sitting up a bit in my hiding space, that little crevice between the bed and the wall. "I'm always watching, you know."

Obito ran. He crossed the space between himself and Rin in half a second's time, darting forward and grabbing her pale hand, barely-contained hope taking over his face.

"Rin?" he asked again. He threw a wild look over his shoulder. "Rin is here?"

Mutely, Minato nodded. Obito didn't notice, but I saw my cousin's gaze slowly slide to the side, and it I realized that he had probably recognized my voice.

"How?" Obito asked, shaking. "How is…"

"At the last minute, I was able to put her under a stasis seal," Minato explained, ignoring me for now. "We've been waiting until the time was right to find someone to heal her. If we hadn't known you'd be coming, I would probably have already sent someone out to retrieve Tsunade-sama a while ago."

"Stasis…?" Obito repeated. For a moment, he stood over her in shock. "Then…"

What followed was the longest minute of silence in my life.

Then, suddenly, the bedsheets were ripped away and I found myself being yanked out of my hiding spot by the arm. Obito whirled around and dangled me in the air in front of Minato with a look of fury.

"Who the hell is this?" he hissed, shaking me at him. Minato's face went pale as death. I winced, kicking my feet a bit and searching for purchase, but unfortunately, I was light enough to be held several inches off the ground. "Are you trying to trick me, using some little girl to parrot Rin's words at me? Are you trying to say that you've made some fancy time-stopping seal? Isn't that thing just a corpse?!"

Minato was flummoxed. There was no other way to describe him. He was just... speechless. Speechless, and horrified.

"It's not!" I exclaimed when it became clear he wasn't going to reply anytime soon. "She's not dead."

"And why the fuck should I believe you?" Obito snarled, throwing me down onto my back so hard that the air rushed right out of my lungs. I immediately began coughing, winded, but Obito seized me by the front of my jacket before I could recover.

"Because—" I panted, trying to catch my breath, "Because—because I'm the one who saved her!"

"Suzu—" Minato began, finally snapping out of his stupor. Obito threw out a hand, silencing him.

"You're the one who saved her?" the Uchiha teen repeated quietly. "_Saved _her?"

"Yes," I affirmed, as bravely as I could. My skin began growing clammy as I realized that I was probably a few short words away from experiencing a bloody and brutal murder. Some far off part of my consciousness quietly suggested that this was perhaps exactly what Minato had been trying to avoid when he'd forbidden me from coming in the first place. "I—I pulled her out of the way, so the Chidori didn't go through her heart."

For a moment, Obito stared. And then he let out a snort of total and utter derision.

"That—" he jerked his free hand at Rin's body, "is not _saved_, little girl."

Little girl. It was something, I think, that Madara Uchiha would say. A speech attribute Obito had adopted to make himself appear to be Madara. Something he'd picked up after practicing to take the man's place.

It didn't really offend me. Condescension due to my young age was something I experienced rather frequently. But this time, even though I normally wouldn't mouth off over an insult as petty as "little girl"—and I really _was_ just a little girl in the end, anyway—something inside me seemed to say _talk back_. Somehow, I got the feeling that instead of going about it in the more cautious, "shinobi" sort of way, I ought to try and confront Obito on a different level. After all, he was by nature the kind of person to fight head-on when he got the chance. Maybe I could bring that out in him again.

"Little girl?" Acting on pure instinct, I repeated his words with high, clear bravado, willing myself to forget all notions of fear and caution. "Who are you calling a little girl? Don't get all high and mighty just because you're a few years older than me."

Obito opened his mouth to bite back a scathing reply, but I interrupted him before he had the chance, determined. To do what, though, I didn't know. To piss him off, maybe. To make him mad and trip him up.

"What do you think you're doing, running in here and blaming Minato, moaning about how you're doing this because Rin is gone?" I demanded. "That's bullshit. You're not doing this for Rin. Not with the way you're acting. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, you acting like this means you didn't really care for Rin at all!"

I think Minato might have yelled my name when Obito slammed me into the wall, but I can't recall it too well. I _do _remember the fantastic cracking noise my skull made upon impacting the wood, though.

"Who do you think you are?" Obito growled quietly at me, pressing a kunai against my throat to the point that I felt warm blood begin to trickle down my neck. "Don't talk like you know my circumstances. You don't _know _how much I loved Rin. What do you have that can compare?"

"If you think Rin would be happy with you acting like this," I managed to croak through ringing ears and swimming vision, "then maybe the Rin I knew was different than yours. My Rin wouldn't want you murdering people and trying to destroy the village she tried to die for."

Obito's hand began to shake. "Shut up," he snarled. I felt the cold edge of his knife sink just a bit deeper into my skin.

"My Rin wouldn't want you to come barging in here acting like a murderer," I said, finding a steady voice again despite the fact that blood was beginning to soak into my shirt. "Acting like you're cold and tough while hiding the fact that you're crying and hurt on the inside."

"Shut up!" he repeated, louder this time. I set my jaw took a deep breath.

"If you loved the same Rin as me," I shouted into his face, pointing to the bed, "you would know that no matter what kind of state she's in, she's _watching you right now!_"

"_Shut up!_" Obito roared. There was a flash of metal, and then I found myself being tossed across the room. Things seemed to move in slow motion as blood flew through the air. I landed with my hands pressed to my neck, feeling slippery red liquid spurt onto my fingers as I tumbled across the ground and then crashed into the door.

"_Suzu!_" came Minato's horrified yell. Before a second had passed he was kneeling next to me, turning me over with frantic hands. I immediately began coughing, having had the air knocked out of me once again.

"Let me see it," he demanded, fingers closing around my shoulders in an iron grip. When I removed my shaking hands, they came away smeared red. The look on his face was one of blank terror.

For a brief, panicked moment, I thought I was dead. I thought my throat had been slit and that it was all over. But then I noticed that though there was blood, it wasn't gushing, and that though I was gasping like a fish out of water, I was still taking in air.

"It's not deep," I realized, panting. "It's only a scratch. I can breathe, the artery isn't severed, it's fine!"

I struggled into a sitting position before hastily wiping my sleeve against my skin. The cloth came away with an ugly stain, but it cleared up the blood that was obscuring a long but shallow cut across my skin. Minato, hands still on my shoulders, took a moment to just sit and stare at it, watching it ooze gently. Then his arms fell to his sides and he let out a long, long breath.

"Never," he told me quietly, voice tight, "do that again."

* * *

I was somewhat surprised to discover that the Obito here today was far more unstable than the Obito from the series. To be honest, I'd thought it'd take a little bit more than screaming in his face to bring him down, but in hindsight, it _did_ make sense. After all, the end-series Obito I knew had had some ten-plus years to work himself in the rhythm of villainy. This one was still trying to commit one of his first big crimes.

Trying being the keyword; at the moment, I judged that he was failing.

After throwing me across the room, Obito had had something a meltdown. Not a meltdown in the hysteric sense, though. He went more catatonic than anything. No matter what we did, he didn't respond; all he could do was stand over Rin's bed and stare. He stared when Minato tried to talk to him. He stared when Jiraiya arrived and pasted a seal on his back to keep him from activating his chakra. And when the ANBU showed up and hauled him away, he just kept on staring.

After he was gone, the room filled with a sort of silence that can only come after witnessing an incredible anticlimax. I kept my seat by the door, silently studying the blood soaking my collar, sleeve, and hands. Minato went and stood in the center of the room with a look that said he was a thousand miles away, and Jiraiya leaned himself against the wall, glancing between us repeatedly.

I'd never experienced anything more awkward in my life.

"...So, brat," Jiraiya said after a while, coming over to squat down in front of me. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I snuck in this morning and waited under the bed," I said, not really knowing what else to tell him. I was probably in shock. Minato likely was, too.

"Past the ANBU?" Jiraiya asked dubiously.

I was unwilling to recount the tale of the _definitely-not-Akihiko_ person who had helped me, so I just nodded. Jiraiya looked incredulous.

"...Minato, this kid should be a tokujou," he finally announced, glancing over to his student. "I think she needs a promotion."

Slowly, Minato turned his head to look at me. "I think," he said after long pause, "she needs a _court-martial_."

His words made me go white as a sheet. Jiraiya was struck dumb again.

"Damn, kid, what did you do to piss him off that badly?" he demanded after he'd recovered, eyes wide as he turned back to me. "I think he just _threatened _you!"

"It's not a threat," Minato intoned, with a cold sort of calmness that made me feel like I wouldn't live to see the light of tomorrow. I shivered violently.

"He shouldn't be this mad just because you snuck in," Jiraiya muttered, looking at me with utter incomprehension. "He'd be mad, but not _that_ mad."

Honestly, I think I was just as shocked as Jiraiya was. I mean, I had obviously known Minato would be upset with me for disobeying his orders, but I didn't think he'd be _that_ upset. I'd expected a sort of… I don't know, a loud and angry scolding, I guess. Not quiet, controlled fury.

After a moment of consideration, I pulled down the side of my bloodied turtleneck, revealing the angry red line there and showing it to Jiraiya. "I think..." I mumbled, "I think it's because of this."

Interest piqued, Jiraiya leaned forward and examined it. "It's a clean cut," he said after a moment of brief inspection. "Not deep, either. I doubt it'll scar."

I think he was going to say something else, too, but at that moment Minato threw us both a look so acidic I thought my skin would melt off. Jiraiya and I exchanged glances. He shut his mouth.

And then a deafening roar split the air.

Before I could blink, Jiraiya was on his feet and Minato was at the window, overcoat billowing behind him. Smacking his hand down on the glass and laying down some sort of deactivation seal, he hastily threw it open, almost jumping out in his haste to get a better view. I felt the blood drain from my face.

"Kyuubi?!" he half-asked, half-swore as the giant demon fox materialized on the horizon, a little beyond the village walls. It roared again, throwing its head back and thrashing its tails.

"Shit! What the hell?" Jiraiya joined his student at the window. "I thought we'd stopped him!"

"Oh my God, wait," I muttered, having a sudden thought. "Don't tell me—don't tell there weren't any sealing specialists overseeing Kushina when she went into labor? Because the seal would be weakened?"

Minato and Jiraiya simultaneously whipped their heads around, near-identical "oh, shit" expressions on their faces.

"I brought Obito here just after it started, as we planned," Minato said. We both jerked our gazes to Jiraiya.

"I was called away to fortify the eastern fate, but I left reinforcement seals with Hiruzen-sensei's wife!" the man defended. "If the Kyuubi was ever in danger of escaping, they only had to apply them to keep it in place!"

"Then how?" I asked. Dread rose in me. "Did… did Obito escape?"

"With one of my chakra repression seals on him?" Jiraiya immediately scoffed, looking insulted. "He had a full contingent of ANBU guarding him."

"There's no time for this," Minato interrupted before his teacher could begin quibbling, jumping onto the windowsill. "I have to go find Kushina. Sensei—"

"You want me find the Barrier Corps and activate the wall?" Jiraiya asked before he could finish, switching from playfully offended to dead serious in a heartbeat. "I'm on it."

As the Sannin shunshin-ed away, Minato turned to me. "Suzu," he said, "I need you to go to confirm Obito's status with the ANBU Commander. He's stationed atop the Tower right now. If Obito's escaped, tell him to report to me immediately. If not, let him know he may apply himself and his subordinates to the village's defenses at his discretion."

I swallowed, gathering up my vest and scrambling to my feet with a quick nod.

"When you get there, you _will_ listen to him." Minato gave me a flinty glare. "After you deliver this message, he's going to order you to inside, and you had better sit your defiant ass down right where he tells you to, or I am throwing you out of the Forces. Are we clear?"

His words went in one ear and out the other. Stunned, I worked my jaw as words failed me.

Had… had Minato just called me an _ass_?

"Are we _clear_?" he demanded, face growing stormier by the second. I automatically snapped to attention, going stiff as a board.

At that point I think I finally realized that the man whose orders I had disobeyed was not my indulgent big brother, but an S-ranked ninja who also happened to be ultimate military power of Konoha. Under that icy stare, I found myself thinking that I might have never really known the true Minato Namikaze at all.

I immediately lurched forward and bowed at the waist, hiding my face before the hurt inevitably showed. It took two deep breaths before I was certain I could speak without my voice cracking.

"Yes sir, Hokage-sama," I uttered.

* * *

**A/N: God, that was hard to write. Though surprisingly enough, it was Minato who gave me the most issues this time, rather than Obito. I mean, I did have difficulty with Obito, don't get me wrong, but Minato… it was like pulling teeth. I guess I'm not used to writing him as anything but a nice, doting big brother, so making him get actually really mad and swear and be mean and stuff... it felt kind of wrong.**

**On another note, I've finally posted the prologue to my other story, Land of a Thousand Rising Tides! It focuses on an Uzumaki girl living in the years before the fall of Whirlpool. Since Glory was giving me so much trouble, I spent most of the month working on that one to avoid getting blocked completely. If you have the time, check it out! Take a look at the poll in my profile, too.**

**Anyway, sorry for the month-long wait. Hopefully the next part of the Kyuubi attack will be more forthcoming.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	24. Age 13: Souhei's Secret: Part 1

**Published: 5/4/2015**

**Edited: 5/28/2015**

* * *

**Age 13: Part 1**

_"You know, this chapter used to be called 'Plot Twist,' once upon a time."_

"_Are you serious? '_Plot Twist'_? Was that _really _the best you could do?"_

"_Back off, man, a shitload of stuff goes down in this one! There's the whole Minato fiasco, the career crisis, the death threat, the Danzou foreshadowing, the Souhei thing… what else was I _supposed _to call the chapter?"_

* * *

"It's here."

My cousins all crowded around as Uncle Souhei handed me a thin scroll sealed with red cloth, face grave. Thankfully for me, Auntie Reiko was off with a couple of women delivering soup to the western half of the compound, which had been stepped on quite thoroughly by the Kyuubi. I absently rubbed a bruise on my arm, trying not to remember the incredible beatdown that had ensued after she'd learned of my October tenth escapade.

"I've never seen one before," Chiharu informed with a fearful sort of awe, staring down at it with wide eyes. Jinta and Akira hung over her shoulders, looking similarly enthralled by the appearance of the promised court martial.

"It's not that big a deal," I snapped, scowling and smacking her across the nose with it. Uncle gave me a look as Chiharu drew back and hissed.

"Thin ice, Misuzu," he told me candidly, not looking at all angry. I swallowed and quickly mumbled an apology at my foster sister, who glared and crossed her arms but was otherwise sincere as she imparted her forgiveness. I was then fixed with the expectant gazes of a half-dozen pairs of eyes.

Letting out a pent-up sigh, I dug my nail under the fabric's edge and pulled the scroll free. Unrolling it revealed a scant few lines written with bold strokes and an ink as black as pitch. "Tomorrow morning at nine in the Hokage's office," I told them dully, holding it open for them to see. "A notice of temporary suspension until formal punishment is passed."

When he reached out, I handed it off to Jinta without hesitation, pinching it between my fingers like it was a rotting banana peel. It quickly began making its rounds around the room.

"You had it coming," Uncle Souhei pointed out, matter-of-fact. "Family or not, one does not simply ignore the Hokage."

"I get it," I groaned, massaging the bridge of my nose. "For the millionth time, I get it. I was bad to disobey the Hokage. I will properly get on my knees and beg for forgiveness tomorrow."

Lord knew I had heard enough of it these past few days. I would have gone on, but Uncle Souhei didn't usually take well to sass, and one look at his face was enough to silence me from any further comment.

"_Thin _ice, Misuzu," he repeated. I shuddered and decided it would be prudent to remove myself from his presence as quickly as possible.

* * *

The next day found me guilty of insubordination in the highest degree. It was a lenient conviction; going against the Hokage was more material for treason than anything else. I think I was meant to be grateful, but gratitude was the last thing on my mind when Minato delivered his verdict. It was a declaration indefinite removal from the active Forces—that is, an edict barring me from any and all missions until he said so.

Had I not been so supremely salty, and had I not already been living in a community home, I would have flipped my shit. To a shinobi, missions were everything. Missions were duty and missions were bread. Without them, he would starve, both spiritually and physically—the latter due to lack of income, the former due to lack of purpose. But salty I was, so I just steeled my expression, bowed at the waist, and droned the obligatory "Yes, Hokage-sama."

That day marked the beginning of a months-long estrangement. After the court was disbanded, I made no inquiry to the health of his wife, son, or former-student-turned-prisoner whatsoever. I could tell well enough what had gone on anyway; after having delivered my message to the ANBU Commander, I had been locked in the Tower with a quartet of masked men for guards, and when I'd finally emerged, the Kyuubi had been gone and the whole of the Forces—ANBU and all—had been throwing their arms up in wild celebration. It had been easy enough from there to deduce that the Kyuubi had been sealed, that the man responsible for the attack was still in custody, and that none of Yondaime-sama's precious family members were dead. It was just as well, too, since he never bothered to bring me back into the loop. In fact, the court martial had been our first encounter since the confrontation in Rin's hospital room at all.

No, I was in no mood to be looking after Minato. I had not the slightest interest in the affairs of his personal life. I had merely looked at him, taken in his patronizingly regretful face, and put on the most disgusted sneer I was humanly capable of. Then I had pulled off both my hitai-ate and my vest and marched out of his office. I'd been tempted to give him the finger, too, but at that point even my defiant American spirit had acknowledged I was in deep enough shit as it was. Best not to push it _too _hard.

And that was the start of my suspension. For the first month, I was a creature made of spite and little else; I was hardly ever anything but angry. Beyond the severe punishment I had been dealt—and seriously, what was up with that? I had the childish thought that Mulan had been rewarded for breaking the law and saving China, but after that I also realized that she was from a Disney movie and was thus rather disqualified as a measure of reality—I was totally and utterly disillusioned. October tenth had been a night of unprecedented betrayal, and a wounding confirmation of the fact that I had been denying for months: _niichan_ was a fat lie. The fact of it was that I had been duped, and that Minato Namikaze was absolute scum to have tricked me. When he showed up for my birthday dinner, I took my food from the table and ate in the sitting room.

(At that point, the adult within me had been smashing her head through walls, unable to believe she had actually fallen so deeply into childish hero-worship. I resolutely ignored her; after all, children and adults alike will deny with fervor the inevitable conclusion that they are the very root of their own problems. What little maturity I had managed to scrape together after reconciling with Itsuki was lost to the wind.)

The second month I spent in denial. Unable to take missions, I found little satisfaction in training, and instead devoted all of my energy to the domestic arts. I spent hours upon hours cleaning and cooking and sewing with Auntie. At a point I stopped dressing as a ninja altogether and soon found myself living a lifestyle that was positively civilian; by month four I began thinking I might quit the Forces completely, if it meant I could stay living like this forever, unburdened by killing and strife and combat stress. After the scare Auntie had received upon seeing me and all the blood dried on my neck, she seemed perfectly happy to have me safe at her side.

I can say with confidence that that time had been one of the biggest crossroads of my life. If things had gone a little differently, I have no doubt I would have retired from being a shinobi completely. After all, when I had been living on Earth, I had entertained a secret daydream of becoming a housewife more than once, and it had become apparent that such a dream was really in my grasp. With the way things had been going, all I would have had to do was wait a few years, find a guy to marry, have some kids, and bam, daydream would be reality. After spending a good couple of years mucking it out on the battlefield, it was far more attractive a prospect than you might think. The daily household tasks of cooking and cleaning and laundry took on a certain beauty that could never appreciated before experiencing the strain of bloody ninja life.

I think Kakashi must have sensed my pending change of heart, because he began to visit me with an air of something that I was inclined to call panic. He wasn't really privy to the details of my falling-out with Minato, but he knew something was wrong and presented me with several arguments to keep me from quitting: one, that I was decently competent ninja and that Konoha would gain at least a minor profit from my service; two, that though I wasn't really on his level I was a good sparring partner for killing time; and three, that Minato would feel bad if I gave up my career because of him.

…Yeah, Kakashi really wasn't too much of a linchpin in my return to active duty. I knew he meant well, but he still had a little ways to go before he broke the threshold of social competency.

I spent a good chunk of time in that state, adamantly refusing to acknowledge anything from my ninja life: Kakashi's badly-phrased pleas, the nagging sense that I was abandoning a duty, the small and insidious reminders that I had promised a friend in a hospital somewhere that I would go fetch help for her as soon as I had been able. It was only several months later, in the very beginnings of spring, that I finally decided that—despite my suspension—I wanted to be a ninja again.

* * *

_"Tell me more about your Hokage."_

_"You said he's a good elder brother."_

_"So you don't deny your Hokage is a monster, then?"_

"Rgh!" I grunted, giving an irate kick to the grass as I made my way around the back, carrying a load of shirts to be strung on the clotheslines. Ever since the attack, Junichi's words had been popping in and out of my head relentlessly, and just remembering my unshakeable faith in Minato's goodness was enough to make me cringe with mortification. What would that Iwa jounin say if he could see me now? I shuddered even to think of it.

"Did you stub your toe?" Auntie asked curiously at the sound of my wordless curse, poking her head out from behind the billowing folds of a bedsheet. I shoved the sneering Rock-nin's face out of mind and set my basket down on the grass, holding in a sigh.

"Yeah," I lied instead, bending over and gathering a handful of wooden clothespins. "That pile of rocks Kouji has been gathering by the steps."

"Oh, those?" Auntie laughed. "I've tripped on them at least twice this week because I wasn't looking."

It was a peaceful afternoon. The air was filled with the scent of new flowers and fresh laundry detergent; the sky was a lovely light blue, dotted with puffy little white clouds. Once again, the usually bustling House was empty of most everyone except the young children and the Academy kids, who had just returned from school. Having been explicitly warned not to soil the washing, most of them had evacuated the immediate premises and established their usual afternoon play in the front yard instead.

I took a minute to pause in my work and appreciate the good weather. Such a day would be considered prime for traveling, and I suspected a lot of out-of-village missions that had been put off for the winter were finally commencing today. Kakashi was leaving for Tea Country on such a mission today; I was a bit sorry I couldn't go with him, but I still felt quite comfortable being here at home.

"Hm?" Auntie suddenly perked up, turning her head toward the house. I knew immediately that Uncle was home; Auntie had an incredibly accurate Souhei-sensor built into her, and she was capable of picking up his presence even when he was hiding it. A smile bloomed on her face.

But then it slowly faded. "Go inside, kids," we faintly heard his voice say. "Go up to your rooms and close the doors and windows, please."

The tension in his voice was undeniable. The kids knew it too, because soon we saw a tiny swarm of blond-haired children, all covered in varied amounts of dirt, hastening through the sitting room and up the stairs. Auntie and I exchanged glances before dropping the clothes back into their baskets and going over to Uncle, who came out onto the veranda grim-faced.

"Is it...?" Auntie trailed, glancing at me before looking up to her husband.

"It is," Uncle confirmed, pulling a black envelope out of his pocket and handing it to her. "They're finally making good on their threat. It says they're coming today. I just finished talking with the Uchiha MP."

The military police? The dots connected immediately. Sending the kids inside, closing doors and windows, a black envelope, a threat...

"Someone's targeting us?" I asked, alarmed. "Since when?"

"Since late last year, or thereabouts." Uncle gave me a grave look. "From about the time you got home from Earth Country. We reported it, of course, but it seems the matter never made it far up into the system."

"We're not guarded at all?" That was a bit of a surprise. You would think there would be at least one ANBU lurking around here for exactly this sort of situation.

"No more than the rest of the clan is." Uncle shook his head. "But the Uchiha said they'll redirect a patrol in this direction. Until they get here it'll be up to us to keep ourselves safe."

In hindsight, he probably should have brought us inside to tell us that. As soon as the word of reinforcements left his mouth, a trio of ninja burst out of the bushes with a hail of kunai and shuriken. The House caretakers reacted immediately; Uncle Souhei was grabbing me by the front of my blouse and hauling me into the house before I'd even had the chance to tense my legs for a dodge. I caught a glimpse of Auntie ducking and darting forward with a fist raised before Uncle and I were sent tumbling into a bookcase by a sudden rocketing kick.

Uncle was up the moment we came to a stop, flipping onto his feet with lithe grace and sinking into what I recognized as a Hurricane Gale tenth-tier close-quarters combat defensive form—I had encountered it only once, at the Academy's annual taijutsu exhibition. As I stared with my jaw agape, two more shinobi appeared in front of us, making for another set of three.

"Stay there," my foster father barked when I made a clumsy attempt to get up and stand with him. "Don't engage. You'll slow me down."

Before I could protest, he was gone in a flurry of kicks and dodges and throws, sweeping his feet across the ground and pivoting in circles with the finesse of a true master. He blocked a kick and used its momentum to toss his attacker straight out into the yard before he caught a punch and spun down to one knee. In a single movement, he laid the responsible arm across it, put his hand at the elbow, and mercilessly broke it in half.

I watched in wordless awe as my uncle proceeded to throw his attacker's snapped arm down and deliver a knock-out elbow straight to the face. Then he twisted his torso and, without even flinching, jabbed two fingers into the eyes of the man sneaking up behind him. Hard. With chakra.

Good Lord, I thought with a mix of admiration and disgust. _That_ is how a ninja fights. Had Souhei Namikaze always been such a ruthless opponent? I appreciated for the first time that Uncle was, in fact, a jounin.

"You…!" the man who had been tossed into the yard appeared in the doorway, looking over his fallen comrades with shock. He face was covered, but I could tell the face he then turned on my uncle was a fearsome one.

"Don't like it?" Uncle Souhei asked coldly, standing. "Too bad. Come here so I can kill you."

That fellow was already a dead man walking. He sprang forward, unsheathing hidden a sword, but Uncle easily sidestepped him. His attacker spun around and made three rapid strikes aimed for Uncle's head; on the third swing, Uncle's glasses went flying from his face, the right lens cut clean in half.

The air's temperature immediately dropped. I found my shoulders seizing up as killing intent swelled up and spilled out, flooding the room like water rushing from a broken dam. Without frames on his face, Uncle Souhei's eyes somehow looked thinner and sharper. More fit for a glare.

"You have skill," he said quietly, looking up from his crouch with a glacier gaze, letting the KI roll off of him in waves. "It will be an honor to snap your neck."

And in a flash, he darted forward and did just that.

* * *

"You killed him?" Auntie clucked her tongue in disapproval. Her opponents were all neatly hogtied in the backyard, being hauled away by the Uchiha military police officers, who had arrived just three minutes after the fight. "You should have held back a least a bit."

"Those two are still alive," Uncle grunted, extending a disdainful finger toward the two invaders who were being picked up off the sitting room floor. The unconscious one's arm was dangling at a grossly unnatural angle, where the other one was biting back an agonized groan and holding a bloodied hand over his face. The corpse had already been removed.

"Ojisan," I said a bit faintly, finally managing to find my voice, "you're scary."

"A man's house is his castle," he replied, looking at me with his unsettlingly uncovered eyes. "Anyone is scary when he fights to defend his home."

"I'm glad you had to the foresight to send the children up," Auntie murmured, glancing concernedly up the stairs. "If they saw you like that, you would be hard pressed to even get close to them. Let me go check on them…"

As Auntie moved away, Uncle Souhei sighed and wiped his two bloody fingers on the hem of his shirt. He spoke briefly with the patrol leader, who informed him that the Hokage had been notified, and that ANBU were now stationed around the House. I swallowed as he bent down and picked up the remains of his eyeglasses.

"These were my last pair," he sighed again, fingering one of the nosepads. "How bothersome…"

"Do you have contacts?" I asked after a moment of hesitation. Uncle Souhei snorted gently.

"No. There wouldn't be any point," he said, shaking his head and gathering the pieces in one hand before laying them gingerly on the coffee table. "Stay here. Answer their questions if they ask."

"Sure…" I trailed as he picked his way across the room, avoiding the fallen bookshelf and scattered volumes of the Medical Herbalism Encyclopedia with ease. After a moment, my curiosity overcame me and I went over to the table, wondering what kind of prescription he had.

I held up the still-intact left lens to my eye and found it was made of perfectly plain glass.

* * *

The next day, when Auntie and Uncle went away to answer a summons from the Hokage, I snuck into their bedroom. Employing all of my infiltration skill, I removed any loose hairs from my clothes, pulled on a pair of plastic gloves, and cautiously began poking through the desk under the window, taking careful note of what was where so I could put everything back in perfect order when I was done.

The first drawer contained most of the papers related to the House's financial state, which I stopped looking at once I realized that we were in the red. If the negative sum bore any resemblance to what used to be my monthly income, well… I didn't really want to know. Instead, I looked to the second drawer, which was full of medical journals. I ignored those too, since one look at the top issue's contents flew right over my head.

I hit paydirt when I opened the bottom left drawer and found a recently opened letter bearing today's exact date, stored between a calligraphy set and a black journal with a blank cover. Shamelessly, I extracted it from the pile, sat down on Uncle's chair, and began to read.

_Souhei,_

_I had Hideaki look into the matter, and as you suspected, the matter of the death threats from the winter of last year was not reported to the Hokage. Though it had been marked for urgent address, it was pulled before it could reach his office. Hide was able to follow a trail through ANBU channels, and despite the fact that he lost it before he found its destination, the evidence he gathered strongly suggests that it ended up with Danzou. _

_Though this could mean any number of things, it's a sure sign that he has some sort of new machination in the works. I doubt he sent attackers personally since it is evident they were not ROOT-level, but it is clear the old warhawk wished for this incident to take place. He might just be trying to gauge our new Hokage's reaction, but I can't tell for sure. We will need to meet in person to have a more constructive discussion. _

_With that said, we will be holding a meeting this week. It looks like it'll fall on Thursday, since everyone else is busy otherwise. I find this to be good timing; we will also be able to speak about the matter of the canon derailment. You said you had an explanation, so we are all eager to have you bring us up to speed. While most of the changes so far have been minor, this latest one is a huge development. We're not sure how to proceed from here._

_Anyway, I'm glad to hear that you and your lot are safe. It would be a shame if our leader died on us. Let me know if you're free for this Thursday._

_Wishing you good health,_

_Kyouya_

It took a good five or ten seconds before I was able to process the information I had just taken in. Then, feeling completely blindsided, I put down the letter and let out a strangled noise. My Uncle Souhei had connections in ANBU? He was the leader of some sort of secret organization?

_The matter of the canon derailment—_

I felt the blanket of shock settle over me lightly. Slowly, I looked down at the letter again and realized with numb disbelief that it was written completely in English.

No. No _way_.

I accosted him as soon as he came home. Not caring for the fact that he would know I had been snooping in his mail, I took hold of his shirt and asked blurted out in my native tongue, "Are you from Earth?"

For a long, long moment, Souhei Namikaze stared down at me with uncomprehending eyes. His gaze was so blank that, for a brief moment, I thought I had somehow been mistaken. But then, with a distinctly Boston accent, he slowly shook his head and said, "I should whip you for going through my things."

At that moment, I felt the world stop turning. My arms dropped limply to my sides.

"T-Then…?" I whispered, mouth going dry.

"I had planned to tell you eventually," he said softly, still speaking his strange New England English. "After Kyouya sent me the letter, I had figured it was about time. With all of your meddling in the storyline, it was high time we sorted things out."

It was lucky everyone else had gone upstairs. I felt my knees buckle; Uncle Souhei caught my elbow and gently lowered me down to the sitting room floor.

"Yes, it's just as it seems," he murmured quietly. "I'm from Earth."

* * *

**A/N: I think some of you might be a bit angry, since I had promised more of the Kyuubi attack, but to be honest there was nothing more to write. Suzu got her bit of action and then was thoroughly grounded by Minato. I attempted writing another chapter of it to keep everyone happy, but when I tried it was nothing but Suzu sitting in a room and alternating between angrily ranting about how Minato was totally unfair and angsting over the fact that there was nothing else she could do. So in the end I just scrapped it and jumped to the aftermath. Besides, one of my friends told me not to pander to my audience if I felt it decreased the quality of the story, and I've decided that that is sound advice.**

**But anyway, this means I finally get to start writing the one arc I've been direly waiting to get to. Please, drop a review and give me your thoughts on the reveal. How many of you suspected Souhei's origins? In fact, just give me your thoughts on Souhei in general. I know a few of you suspected Suzu wasn't the only Earthling running around, but had you figured he was one of them?**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	25. Age 13: Souhei's Secret: Part 2

**Published: 5/30/2015**

* * *

**Age 13: Part 2**

"_Ha! Yes! Tsubasa finally appears!"_

"_Tsu-chan, behave yourself. You're too old to be so boisterous."_

"_No, Kyouya, you're just an old man. You were like that even when I was a kid—"_

"_You're still a kid, brat. You think that just because you're not a teenager anymore, you're an adult? Please."_

"_Now, now, Aoi…"_

* * *

"Hey, Reiko, I need to step out for a while," Uncle Souhei said, picking up Kyouya's letter from his desk, along with the black journal that I had seen stored next to it. Auntie took one look and it and nodded without hesitation, not asking where he was going to go. She didn't even question why I was standing in the doorway; she just gave her assent and looked away.

"Wait, is that it?" I asked when we were out the house and down the road, walking towards the village training grounds. When I had gotten off the floor, Uncle had promised me an explanation but said we'd have to go somewhere where we couldn't be overheard; with the House being the House, the need for a location change was not unexpected. "She didn't even say anything."

"Reiko is…" Uncle paused thoughtfully, slowing his stride a bit. "Well. Once we had stabilized our marriage and stopped plotting each other's deaths, I figured I had to tell her about my… ah, immigration status." He grimaced a bit and glanced around, but luckily for us it was just after lunch and the streets were mostly empty. "I had been meeting up with everyone and keeping the secret for a while at that point. But when I tried to sit her down to talk about it, she refused to hear any of it. Said that she liked where we had finally gotten and that if there were circumstances outside that I was worried about, she wouldn't pry. So as long as I treated her with respect, she said, she would trust me with a few secrets."

I think my eyes just about bugged out of my head. "_What?_" I asked, confounded. I had never heard of any woman doing such a thing in either of my lives.

"I think she thinks I'm in ANBU," Uncle Souhei admitted. "Or some other similarly top-secret undercover role. I think she just wants to prevent any fallout in our relationship... it's very shinobi of her, isn't it?" He rubbed his neck. "I… haven't really corrected her on it. I mean, I told her that I really didn't mind telling her, but she was adamant about staying ignorant. So I didn't push it and now whenever I go out to meet with the group or exchange letters with them, she assumes it's part of my secret job and doesn't ask. She probably thinks I'm trying to recruit you right now or something."

Was that, perhaps, just another one of the cultural differences? Back on Earth, I knew there were wives who got angry enough when their husbands did something as simple as went out on a weekend camping trip with their guy friends. Auntie, though, had just given Uncle Souhei free reign to do just about whatever he wanted.

"That's kind of insane," I said. "She's… what, not worried that you'll cheat, or you're a spy, or whatever? Not saying that you would be the type, though," I hastily added.

Uncle Souhei barked out an amused laugh. It felt a lot better to see a smile on his face; it softened his features quite a bit. He truly did look a lot more menacing without his glasses. His face was still the same, of course, but without those lenses to cover his eyes, there was nothing to hide the glint of sharp, ruthless intelligence in his gaze. Perhaps it was just yesterday's events weighing on my conscience, but he felt a whole lot more dangerous without them.

"Don't worry," he assured me. "Reiko has the incredible quality of being able to see right through me. She would know if I were up to no good. Besides, you're not far from wrong. I was pretty bad when I was younger."

"What?" I screeched to a halt. "What do you mean? Like... you were a _player_ or something?"

Uncle looked away and, to my wonder, began turning red. "I was not the most responsible of teenagers," he muttered. "Nor the most mature. I had a hard time adjusting when I first arrived here… I was a badly spoiled brat. The... privileged frat boy party-prick kind."

"Oh my God," I said flatly. "If you're screwing with me, stop it now. Seriously, stop. How old were you?"

"Nineteen," he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Let's stop talking about it now. I'm older and wiser. Please don't bring it up again."

At that point, I began wondering what this story would be like if it were about Souhei Namikaze instead of me. What a book that would have been.

"Ojisan," I said quietly, once we found ourselves at the training ground and under the shade of a grand tree, tall and thick-trunked. "...How long did you know I wasn't… I mean, how long did you know I was from Earth?"

In response, Uncle Souhei just handed me his little black book. Blankly, I looked at it.

"Back cover lists all the common signs of an Earthling," he informed. "Daisuke compiled it years before anyone else in the group arrived in this universe. I had you ticked off for most of them by the time you'd turned nine." He gave me a wry smile. "It was the reason I showed you the chakra flow technique—if you were one of us, I knew you would have an abnormal mastery of chakra. The fact that you learned it was the all the confirmation I needed."

Mechanically, I opened the book and looked to the inside of the cover. Indeed there was a list: things like _increased critical thinking skills_ and _strange verbal tics _and _use of chakra at a young age_.

"Daisuke?" I asked instead of trying to process the fact that _he had known _for all this time. He had known since I was a kid. He had _known_.

"First page is contacts." Uncle pointed to the book again. I flipped it over and was met with the sight of another list, starting with Arima Aoi and ending with Yoshizawa Tsubasa. There was one Daisuke between them: Sarutobi Daisuke.

"Sarutobi?" I asked, feeling my head begin floating away with shock again.

"It's not what you think it is," Uncle Souhei immediately denied. "I know it might seem like we're that kind of organization, since Hideaki and Aoi are in ANBU and Kyouya is rich and Daisuke's from a noble clan, but it's not. We just get together because we share origins. Nothing more, I promise."

"Really?" I asked skeptically. I had been building an image of a secret society of canon-keepers in my head, full of people monitoring the activities of the village and preventing the plot from going astray…

"Definitely not like that," Uncle Souhei said, reading my thoughts perfectly. "We aren't nearly so expansive a group as that. There are only eight of us, and some of us hardly come to meetings at all. Daisuke is case in point; we can write to him, but he hasn't come out to see us in almost seven years. The whole thing with Hideaki looking through ANBU channels was just… a favor. He did it because it was in his power. That's all. "

"Hayato-sensei is on here," I exclaimed, seeing his name right above Tsubasa Yoshizawa's. "Are you telling me—"

"No, no, he's a Narutoverse native," Uncle quickly assured me, waving a hand. "But he found out when we were genin, so I figured he might as well be part of the group…"

My head was reeling. "This is crazy," I said, shutting the book and handing it back. Uncle shook his head, though, and pushed it back.

"Keep it," he said. "Everyone has one. I've got another."

Mutely, I took it back. Then I opened it again and found all sorts of things in it: a general timeline of the storyline of Naruto, a list of biographies for important characters, detailed lists about important things like the World Wars and the Tailed Beasts…

"There's so much," I said softly, leafing through it. "There's so much knowledge but no one has done anything…"

How far back had Earthlings been showing up into the canon? Why had they sat back and done nothing? Why had my _Uncle _sat back and done nothing when I had been spending nights going insane about what to do and how to help and where to—

"Suzu," Uncle Souhei said, snapping me out of my thoughts. I froze when he put his hands at his sides and bowed to me, deeply at the waist.

"I owe you an apology," he said, facing the ground. "I let you bear the burden of foreknowledge on your own. We all did, and it is because of my cowardice. I am the reason you have suffered this much. Let me beg for your forgiveness."

Do you know what is it like, having lived in a Japanese culture, to have your patriarch lower his head to you until his torso is parallel to the ground, and _beg _for clemency? Stunned, I could only work my jaw at the sight of him, unable to even speak.

"There were several points when they asked me if we should do something," he said softly, maintaining his bow. "But ever since I first came to this universe, I swore not to get involved because it was too hard and too dangerous. It made sense at the time, but ever since you arrived and began trying to make a difference, I should have known I couldn't have stuck to that creed…" There was a long pause. He swallowed. "The others were only following my lead. I'm sorry."

"Please, stop," I finally managed to stutter. "Don't—don't bow. I forgive you. I forgive you wholeheartedly. Please don't bow."

When Uncle Souhei finally righted himself, there was an uncharacteristic sheen to his blue eyes. He gave me a small, sad smile.

"I've taken care of children at the House before," he told me quietly, "but you are the first daughter I've ever had. I don't have the wisdom of a father and I don't know how to raise a child well. I'm sorry."

If there was anything I had left to say, I found no need to say it anymore. No more hows or whys or why nots.

I ran forward and threw my arms around his middle. He caught me, and for several minutes, we stood still in the silence of the forest around us.

* * *

Before we fast-forward to Thursday, let me give you a brief history on the tea merchants of Konoha. Specifically, the Tsukimori family.

Yuuichi Tsukimori was one of the first civilians to come to the village. His family arrived from the border of Hi and Cha no Kuni, on the heels of the Akimichi and its vassal clans the Yamanaka and the Nara. Several of his family members were married into these clans, so it was common sense of him to come along. However, he also owned an expansive amount of merchandise in the tea trade. What was he to do about his business in this cross-country relocation?

The answer was simple: he brought it with him. His plants, his workers, everything. With a little moving help from the Akimichi, who enjoyed his brews very much, it was a cinch. He was welcomed with open arms, for as the incoming shinobi clans brought additional military might, Yuuichi's company brought money; when news spread that the Tsukimori tea had been moved to the Village Hidden in the Leaves, customers and clients alike began flocking forward, and fortunes grew. Tied as he was to the old honorable families of the village, he was able to build a large mansion for himself and his extended family right in the heart of the village, decked out in security fit for any ninja compound. His house and and its fine white perimeter wall were covered with enough privacy and anti-trespassing seals to make even an Uzumaki take interest.

The Tsukimori tea traders remain, to this day, a very well-respected component of Konoha. Unfortunately, however, recent years had seen the waning of its bloodline, and now there was only one Tsukimori left living in that splendid manor built on tea leaves. Forty-seven years old, single, his name was Kyouya Tsukimori, and his house was the headquarters of Souhei Namikaze's secret group of reincarnated aliens.

"You're joking," I uttered as we came to a stop before a large wooden gate. The nameplate, made of a sleek, polished wood, had the characters for TSUKIMORI carved into it. I could see bamboo growing behind the wall, and there was even that little wooden thing that made the _doink _noise sitting on a stone next to the gate door. It was being fed by a tiny decorative waterfall coming from a bamboo pipe in the wall.

"Well, I did say he was rich," Uncle Souhei chuckled. "And honestly, there's no place more secure to meet than this one. He loves the company, too, so don't feel intimidated or anything. If you ever need a place besides your own home to crash, this is it."

"Really?" I asked, turning to look at him. He opened his mouth to respond, but the voice that answered came from above his head.

"Yup, that's true," it said. We both looked up and saw a brown-haired boy, my age or so, standing on the black-tile top of the wall. He wore a large grin on his face, and he just about radiated friendliness. "I started crashing here three years ago. I think at this point it's probably more accurate to say I just live with him."

"Oh, Tsubasa," Uncle said at the sight of him, a smile stretching on his face.

"Thought I heard your voice, boss." Tsubasa beamed back. "How've you been? Hideaki told us there's a creepy old guy trying to kidnap your kids."

"That is not what I said, _chico_." Another person, also brown-haired, suddenly appeared next to him and lightly smacked the back of his head. He seemed to be older—in his twenties, or thereabouts—as he looked down to my uncle with a more laidback smile. "Glad to see you're alright, Souhei. You should come inside."

"Can do," Uncle replied. He was tossed a small scroll, and before I could react, he had taken out a kunai and lightly sliced it across the tip of my thumb. He had unrolled the scroll, dripped a bit of my blood into it, closed it, and healed the cut before I had time to speak.

"So the defenses don't try to toss you out of the house," he explained. "Or possibly do something worse."

"Uh," was all I managed to say before the gate was opened and I was being ushered inside.

The interior of the property was just as luxurious as the exterior. I was welcomed by the sight of an enormous garden, split by a long, winding path that snaked around a sparkling pond. Because it intersected a tiny stream, there was a low stone bridge decorated with carved embellishments connecting the two halves of the path. As expected, clusters of bamboo were growing at various spots in the yard.

"Hideaki," Uncle Souhei began after shutting the wooden doors behind us, "I have to thank you for sticking your neck out for me the other day. I know things wouldn't have ended well if you'd been caught."

"Ah, it's no problem," Hideaki immediately dismissed, waving a hand. "I'd be out of a job if I couldn't look through some records without being caught. Don't worry; I'll keep an eye on bandage-bastard for you."

This assertion was punctuated with a kind smile. I was somewhat taken by his incredibly pleasant attitude; I didn't know ANBU could be so… chill.

"Hideaki's cool, isn't he?" Tsubasa suddenly whispered in my ear, holding up a hand. I jumped.

"Um…"

"You could probably already tell, but I'm Tsubasa," he introduced, drawing back and giving me a sunny look. "How about you?"

"Suzu," I said hesitantly. He held out a hand to shake; I took it gingerly. His grip was firm, but warm.

"I'm guessing you're a Namikaze too," he mused, looking me up and down. "Same as the boss, huh. What are the chances? Well, either way, welcome. It'll be nice to not be the only kid anymore."

Soon we arrived at a ring of lawn chairs, where a few other people were talking and nursing cups of tea. At the head of the circle was a man clad in a traditional kimono-and-hakama ensemble. He wasn't quite old, but he didn't look young, either; his hair, which was mostly black and shiny, seemed to be going a bit prematurely gray at the top.

"Ah, Souhei!" he laughed, clapping his hands together delightedly. "You've arrived! Excellent, that's everyone for now, since Hayato's working. Welcome home."

"I'm back, Kyouya," Uncle warmly returned. He waved me over before putting his hands on my shoulders and pushing me forward. "Here, this is my niece, Suzu. I thought things would go smoother if I brought her along."

"Oh, is that so?" Kyouya peered down at me, and I knew without a doubt he had realized just who had been messing with the canon. But instead of screaming or attacking me or something like that, he just smiled again and greeted warmly, "My name is Kyouya Tsukimori. Welcome to my home. Feel free to come by any time; I always love having people around to brighten up these gloomy halls, and Tsubasa would enjoy the company."

"I would!" Tsubasa emphatically agreed to this. "Please come!"

"Ooh, someone's got his sights set on your girl, Souhei," the only other female in the group hooted, sitting cross-legged in her chair. She was also blond, and I got the sense that she was rather down-to-earth. I felt an immediate and unexplainable kinship.

"Tsubasa is kind and responsible enough, even if he is a clown," Uncle replied easily. "And Suzu's been old enough to handle herself on that front for a while now. If he wants to try his hand at courting her, let him."

I flushed a bright red. "Ojisan!" I said hotly, whirling around. Uncle Souhei quirked an eyebrow at me.

"We're all adults here. I'm not going to engage in any comic overprotective father antics," he informed. There was an immediate burst in chatter.

"Hey, Kyouya, I got permission to flirt with a girl!" Tsubasa exclaimed.

"All things in moderation, Tsu-chan," was Kyouya's wise but blasé reply. Tsubasa began laughing uproariously.

"You know, it's not that terrible a prospect," Hideaki pointed out thoughtfully. "I mean, other than the fact that it's Tsubasa. But where else will you find someone in this universe who actually matches your true age? You'd both have to wait a few years, seeing as you're currently stuck being preteens, but when you're of age…"

"Oh my God." I put my hands over my face and just about melted into a puddle of embarrassed goo.

"Alright, alright, that's enough teasing," Uncle Souhei finally decided, waving his hand. "Everyone, grab some food and take a seat. I think I promised you all an explanation for recent events."

At those words, there was a mad scramble to snatch some cookies and refill on tea. Our host graciously handed me and my uncle two steaming cups before settling neatly into his chair.

"You've probably already guessed what's been going on," Uncle Souhei began. "But I suppose we'll just clear the air. Everyone, this is my niece, Misuzu Namikaze."

I felt my shoulders seize up as a half dozen pair of eyes swiveled toward me. Meekly, I raised a hand in greeting.

"Hi," I said smally. "I'm, um… yeah, I'm the one who's been screwing with the story. Um… _yoroshiku_?"

For a moment, I wondered what kind of reaction I would get. But like children in a classroom, the members of the group simply sat up and chimed back, "_Yoroshiku_."

"...And that's that," Uncle Souhei said, a bit wryly. "Any questions?"

There were not.

As it turns out, Uncle Souhei did not lie. This group of Earthlings was unbelievably casual. They accepted my story of wanting to let Minato and Team 7 survive, inquired a bit towards what sort of actions I had taken and what plans I had in the works, asked if there was anything they could do, and then promptly went back to having a tea party. I was brought into the socialization with little pomp or circumstance.

It was incredible. I was ready to explode with questions. Didn't they have anything else to say? What were their stories? Didn't they want to _do _something? But no, that was it. They told me they were willing to lend a hand if I needed it and just went on back to talking and eating and generally just having a good time. The secret society image I had been holding onto promptly went up in smoke, this time for good.

"I told you," Uncle Souhei quietly said when I took him aside. "We get together because we share origins. I only ended up creating this group because I met Kyouya and we realized there were others like us around. We just wanted a place to be ourselves… that's all. They were concerned about the canon, but only because it's something we all share. Everything else that happens is only because we're friends."

Friends. I looked around at the people around me, sitting in their chairs or in the grass and laughing together. Some of their talk was Earth-related, but some of it wasn't. Kyouya lapsed into British English every now and then, and Hideaki occasionally talked to Tsubasa in Spanish, but in the end they were just regular people talking about regular things. Homesickness I didn't know I had been feeling suddenly swelled and was then relieved; Uncle Souhei only smiled when I found myself holding back sniffles.

"Kyouya's here all on his own, so he likes it when we stop by," he told me. "And he knows that sometimes we all need to get a dose of home. You should feel free to come by whenever you want."

* * *

I was listening to Uncle Souhei and Kyouya talk when Tsubasa, who had disappeared fifteen minutes or so ago, made his presence known again.

"_Tsuki ari!_" he roared, dropping out of a tree with a katana raised over his head. The men behind me started, but Hideaki gracefully sidestepped the blade and, in a single movement, cleanly disarmed his attacker. Tsubasa was sent rocketing back with a kick to the stomach.

"You don't yell _tsuki _when you aim for the face, _estúpido_," the ANBU informed lightly, putting his hands in his pockets. "That's _men_."

"I will definitely defeat you today, Hideaki!" Tsubasa declared, ignoring both the correction and the insult. He drew a ninjato from his back and took on a ready stance. "Prepare yourself!"

"Um, is this normal?" I asked as both Uncle Souhei and Kyouya settled back into in their seats, watching idly as Tsubasa promptly got his ass whipped. Hideaki moved like lightning; each strike Tsubasa attempted met empty air. It was painfully evident that he was outclassed.

"Oh, yes," Kyouya happily confirmed. "Tsubasa always challenges Hideaki when we have meetings. Sometimes he'll try attacking him on the ANBU Base, too."

"What?" I asked, alarmed. "They let him do that?"

"They think it's cute," Hideaki informed, suddenly appearing next to me while casually ducking under a swing. Tsubasa stumbled. "They always put a tail on him the instant he enters he the Residential Block, but he only ever goes straight to my house, so they let him come and visit every now and then."

"Don't make small talk!" Tsubasa yelled, righting himself and diving forward. "I'm fighting you right now!"

Hideaki, in response, sent the boy flying over his shoulder. There was a splash as he landed in the pond.

"He's improved a lot," Uncle Souhei observed, sipping his tea. "You can't fight him blind anymore, can you?"

"Nope," Hideaki admitted. "He cut me last time I tried, so I'm sticking to a no-weapons rule instead. But I think he'll have me drawing kunai by the end of the month."

"I call teams!" Tsubasa suddenly exclaimed, panting as he extricated himself from the mud. "Boss, join me!"

"No thanks," Uncle Souhei mildly declined. "If I fight too much in a week, I'll get the battle itch. I'd best not."

"Don't cheat and try and get your betters to do your work for you," Hideaki scolded lightly. "Besides, have some consideration. If you made me and Souhei spar, Kyouya would have to remodel his whole front yard."

"Tsubasa wrecks the landscape enough on his own," Kyouya assured him dryly. "Trust me, it would be nothing new."

"Fine!" Tsubasa whipped a hand out toward me. "Suzu, let's kick his butt!"

"Eh?" I started. "Wait, me? Isn't this a duel or something…?"

"Alone or on a team, victory is still victory!" Tsubasa brashly proclaimed. "Let's get him now, while Aoi's not around!"

"Aoi could take you on even with a concussion," Hideaki laughed, waving a hand. "If you want, I can pop over to the hospital and bring him over. I'm sure he wouldn't mind beating you up a bit, Tsubasa."

"Pah," Tsubasa spat. Then he fixed me with an expectant look.

Self-consciously, I looked down at my plain blouse and skirt, patting my sleeves and finding I had no kunai on my person whatsoever. Slowly, the conversation around us slowed and stopped.

"Oh," Tsubasa said when the silence stretched, looking awkward. "Er, my bad. I swore you said you were a ninja… um, my mistake."

I froze.

"_Oye, pendejo." _Hideaki immediately frowned, taking in my stricken face. "_Cállate."_

"I'm sorry," Tsubasa instantly apologized, putting a hand on the back of his head and dropping his chin. I let my arms drop to my sides.

"There's nothing wrong with not being a ninja," Nana quickly assured me from her seat across the way. "I'm not one, and neither is Kyouya."

"I…" I looked back at Uncle Souhei, but his gaze was inscrutable. All of a sudden, I felt like I was being slammed with a monstrous choice. My kneejerk reaction was to just laugh and let it go, but something within me stalled. Deep in the back of my mind, I got the feeling that if I didn't correct him now, I would somehow finally quit being a shinobi forever.

Everyone was looking at me again. I twisted my fingers in the hem of my shirt.

Then I blurted out a "sorry" and dashed away.

* * *

**A/N: Sorry for the wait. Here it is: meeting the Earthlings chapter. Hope too many of you weren't expecting a big dramatic meeting. I think this chapter kind of met its feels quota in the first part.**

**I'm definitely enjoying writing Hideaki. Even though he's not going to be a terribly major character, I feel inordinately fond of him. Maybe I just like ANBU boys.**

**Well, either way, he's pretty close with Tsubasa, so we'll see him again. As for Mr. Yoshizawa, well… we'll see xD.**

**Oh, and by the way, there's a new Glory: Sidestories chapter. It's written from Minato's POV. Anyway,**** drop a review and leave me some feedback. Apologies for any typos; I was really feeling the need to stop sitting on this chapter, so I wanted to get it out right away.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	26. Age 13: Souhei's Secret: Part 3

**Published: 6/14/2015**

**Edited: 8/13/2015 for the pre-chapter dialogue.**

* * *

**Age 13: Part 3**

"_It figures you'd get lost in there, Suzu. I'm not surprised at all."_

"_I'm sorry you had to see that. It's embarrassing, but I didn't want to trouble the workers to keep up a place no one was using."_

"_Ah, no, it's fine… Don't worry about it."_

"_But I can't help but fret anyway. It looked really bad, didn't it? Supposedly, that's where my wife's family should have lived, but…"_

* * *

For the record, the Tsukimori estate is large enough to get lost in.

I had just run around the corner, not intending to go far, but when I had gathered enough of my wits to look around, I had found that I had arrived in a completely foreign land. The path back had somehow morphed into gray stone, and the stream that would have returned me to the group was nowhere to be found. Instead, I was somewhere at the entrance to a rock garden. It was a solitary place, standing lonesomely alongside an unoccupied building with dust-covered window sills and cobwebbed corners. There was a row of potted plants sitting by the veranda's walkway, but their contents were brown and withered. The pattern of flowers on the paper of the sliding doors was faded and colorless.

Lost. Not the kind of lost where you say, "Jesus Christ, where the hell is that stupid rendezvous point?" or "I swear we put the camp here!" but the kind of lost where you freeze up and panic. The kind of lost that strikes fear in your soul and makes you want to scream for help. My shoulders began trembling with shivers.

I was lost, and it was a kind of lost that I had not felt in a long time. It was a child's kind of lost.

"This is such an unpleasant piece of land, isn't it?"

I almost screamed. How, I immediately demanded of myself, had you not sensed this man coming? The moment I turned and saw him, I realized that he had a center of chakra that burned like a tiny sun. His presence was probably huge enough to be felt half a mile away.

But the answer came to me easily enough. You didn't sense him, it said, because you're out of practice. You haven't meditated in months. You haven't done a single kata, a single jutsu, a single _lap_, since October. You haven't _trained _in half a year.

"Maybe you should take a seat, little girl," the stranger said as I promptly burst into hot, bitter tears. He was an old man, white-haired, with a wooden cane and and traditional clothes. His face was wrinkled and his skin was covered in age spots, but he had the battle-tried air of a shinobi as he limped to a nearby stone bench.

"What are you crying about?" he asked as I fell onto the seat next to him and bawled, chest heaving with inelegant sobs. His voice was not gentle, but nor was it harsh. It was only curious.

"Ninjas," was my incomprehensible, blubbering reply. I leaned forward until I was bent in half, burying my face in my knees.

"Ninjas," the old man repeated, leaning his cane against the bench. "I see. Well, you're hardly the first."

I just cried harder in reply. Distantly, I felt alarmed. I had no idea where this sudden fit of hysteria was coming from. In fact, I had thought that this week had been a somewhat excellent one: the kids had finally gotten over their colds, I had finished repairing the tablecloth I'd put off mending for two weeks, Uncle Souhei and I had sorted out a new dynamic. Sure, there had been things I had been distantly troubled over, like the House's building financial deficit and how I was going to deal with Kakashi when he returned next week from his mission, but neither of those things were something to have a breakdown over. If we couldn't make ends meet this month, the clan would do its best to pick up the tab, and I had already fielded several "don't quit" visits from Kakashi. There was no need for me to be crying like this.

"Girl, what is your rank?" the stranger asked, gazing at me contemplatively. Between gasps, I haltingly replied chuunin, and he hummed.

"You've done enough, then," he said, rather ambiguously. "Tell me, why did you become a shinobi in the first place?"

Why? As I tried to control the shaking of my shoulders, I thought about it. Because... it was what I did. What I had always intended to do. I was a child of ninjas in a ninja clan living in a village of ninjas from a universe that had been novel to my eyes simply because of the fact that there were ninjas in it. I was a ninja because I had always been expected to be one, and because, as a regular person, the idea of superpowers had been irresistible. Wasn't that it?

No, I realized. Certainly those had been factors, but that wasn't _it_. There was something more. Why had I wanted to be a ninja? It was because...

_"Welcome home, Minato-niichan!"_

_It was a chorus of voices that chimed these words. Mine was among them; I was perhaps the leader of this club, a self-styled Wait-By-The-Door-Until-He-Returns President. At this time of the day we were forever crowding the hallway to the genkan, cluttering the space with our toys while we played to pass the time until Minato came home. _

_Today, however, infinite routine was interrupted by the presence of two—no, three—vested ninjas standing alongside our big brother in the doorway. They were older, adults, and you could tell by the scratches and the wear on their gear that they were seasoned veterans of shinobihood._

_"My, can we help you?" Auntie Reiko asked, a bit bemused by their sudden and unexplainable presence. "Shall I go prepare extra portions for dinner—?"_

_"Ah, there's no need," the lone woman of the group quickly replied. "Pardon our intrusion. We just came by to thank you for raising such an excellent young ninja."_

_"This whole squad would be a crater in the ground if not for this young man," the oldest of them laughed, smacking his calloused hand repeatedly on Minato's back. "He deserves the rank of jounin more than half of the Jounin Corps combined! We're in your debt!"_

_"Sakata-san," Minato murmured, the perfect mix of humble, embarrassed, and pleased. He smiled faintly, cheeks tinted just the slightest red._

_"You little ones, you can learn a lot from your big brother," our third visitor informed, bending down to look at us children in the eye. "Study him well and strive become good ninja like him. Someday you may have the honor of serving the village at his side."_

Someday you may have the honor of serving at his side.

Why had I become a ninja? A cold bolt of lightning struck me as I realized.

To have the honor of serving at his side. To become closer to the hero of my childhood, Minato Namikaze.

"This is his fault," I uttered, feeling my face begin to color. "He's the reason why this is happening. He's why..."

The bite of betrayal I had so thoroughly stifled was suddenly tearing at my ankles again, as though it had never stopped. This time, though, there was an added layer to it, one mixed with dire mortification. How could I have built this man such a pedestal? How had I allowed myself to enter into this state of affairs?

How had I ever let such a liar take hold over my heart?

"Ah, I figured that was the case," the old man said, looking satisfied. "Bereavement begets a different kind of grief than yours—you have the look of someone whose dreams have been crushed. Well, I suppose you'd be at about that point in your career, Miss Chuunin."

I suppose. Said so casually—like "I suppose it will be sunny," or "I suppose I should take in the laundry"—as though it were an afterthought. A thing of little consequence.

"I'm not a chuunin," I hollowly said, looking away. "I'm not a ninja. I don't want to be a ninja..."

Not if being a ninja meant fighting for him. Yes, that was what this was. I knew it now. I wanted to quit being a ninja because Minato had been my reason. I had trained and run missions and strived to improve myself to win his approval. Maybe I had become a shinobi because it had been expected of me, or because of some distant thought for some noble cause like protecting the village, but _he_ had been the reason why I'd worked at it.

If that was what being a ninja was, I didn't want it. I didn't want to devote my life to _him _in any measure ever again.

The old man snorted. "You're a ninja, kid," he dismissively contradicted, interrupting my building train of resolutions. "Stop lying to yourself."

I slowly rotated my head to look at him, feeling the incredulity rise on my face. Did he not _get_ this, or something? I was making the biggest decision of my life right here. I was deciding to cut away my life as a shinobi forever. How could a man speak so flippantly to a girl whose world was collapsing in crisis?

"Youth has the unfortunate property of blowing things completely out of proportion," the man answered. "A bit of flippancy, I've learned, is sometimes just what you need to show a young teenager how to reconnect with reality."

...

I opened my mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. My traitorous mouth, forever airing my thoughts out to the world.

"Chin up, little ninja." The old man stood, his very bones creaking with the movement. "Get out of the house and get to working again. You're just in a slump; idols get crushed all the time. Be grateful for it, because now you can focus on discovering the real reason to being a shinobi instead of focusing on a made-up fantasy. You don't have to let spoiled dreams stop you; just find a better cause to dedicate yourself to this time."

He gave me a wry smile and reached for his cane.

"Growing up isn't any easier the second time, is it?"

When he turned his back to me, I was able to see the clan crest on his back. My eyes grew wide.

Any citizen of Konoha would know the Sarutobi _mon_.

* * *

"That Daisuke," Uncle Souhei muttered, flipping a page in his book. It was a rare moment of downtime, that half-hour space between dinner and bathtime. "The least he could have done was come see us. I guess he just wanted to be a mysterious man who appears to give opportune advice… he's too old for such theatrics."

"He said I should be happy," I said, looking at my uncle's inverted image from across the carpet. Sitting upside-down on the couch, while not exactly common behavior, was not unusual enough in this household to be particularly noteworthy, so anyone who passed us by only spared a cursory glance. "Said that I can find the real reason for being a shinobi."

"Daisuke's been walking in this world for a while now," Uncle Souhei replied. "No matter where he's from or what he's been doing, he's bound to have some measure of wisdom in him."

The point of that sentence went unsaid: that even though he was an Earthling too, he still had valuable advice about ninja life to give. Perhaps even more valuable than it would have been otherwise, since he knew my situation more intimately than any Narutoverse native could. It was his own situation, too, after all.

"Said I was in a slump and should get out of the house," I muttered, playing with the hem of my shirt. "Told me to work."

"I know you've been a big help in managing the House, and I know Reiko appreciates the help tremendously, but maybe he's right," Uncle Souhei suggested. "When I was your age, I hated being at home. I always wanted to be out of the village, travelling or training. Maybe you're just not meant to stay put and do housework at this point in your life."

"But even if that's true, it's kind of hard to do," I pointed out, frowning now. "Forget running missions, I can't even get a job down the street. If I were a genin, I could take part-time work, but I'm not, so I can't. It's against my contract."

After a few days of stewing on it, I had gradually reopened myself to the prospect of taking missions again. Actually, at this point, I was feeling rather embarrassed. Encountering Daisuke had been just the slap upside the head I'd needed to recognize my own melodrama; however large had Minato loomed in my life, he was only big enough to make me quit if I let him. Maybe he could control my ability to take missions like he was now, but in the end _I _was the only one who decided whether to hone my skills as a ninja or not. I wasn't going to let him hinder my development more than he already had—not anymore.

Uncle Souhei looked contemplative for a moment; then he sighed. "How troublesome," he muttered, marking his page and shutting his book. "...Maybe it's time to talk to Minato. Half a year is a long time for a suspension without pay, and we could really use your income. I still can't quite believe he's deprived us of it this long… it's very unlike him."

"Maybe it's not." I instantly soured. "Maybe he was just like that all along. Now that he's Hokage, he doesn't have to worry about your approval so much; he can just lap up praise from some other people—the mindless sycophants always trying to brown-nose the village brass, maybe."

Uncle favored me with a disapproving look. "I understand you have reason to be angry with him," he said, "but that does not excuse narrow-minded prejudice. Though your cousin may sometimes be two-faced, he genuinely loves his clan—us here at the House most of all. You can't deny that."

"Hmmpth." I crossed my arms.

"He loves _you_ quite dearly," Auntie Reiko said, appearing in the doorway. "Don't tell the others, but you might just be his favorite. He used to tell me all the time that he found you the best and most endearing of all his younger siblings, you know."

"Lies," I immediately denied. "Actions speak louder than words. How could you call this," I made a vague circular motion, trying to encompass not only my unemployment status but my general emotional strife, "a circumstance crafted through love?"

"People will always make mistakes," Auntie solemnly replied. "And I suspect that this is one of his. I know you've been hurt, Suzu, but at the very least you should try speaking with him. I know you've done things to hurt him too, as anyone in any relationship has, and even if he faked his gallantry when he forgave you, he forgave you all the same. You owe him that much at least."

My first reaction was to to jump on the defense and immediately protest. I owe him no forgiveness, I wanted to say. I've cut my ties with him. I don't want anything to do with him. I want to ignore him for the rest of my life and die satisfied knowing that he will never have my hand in friendship again.

But I didn't. I held my tongue and I stopped and I thought. Then I looked away.

"I'll go ask him to give me a mission tomorrow," I muttered. Even if he couldn't stop me, the fact that missions were essential to growth as a shinobi was undeniable. "But don't expect hugs and rainbows. I'll be civil enough to talk to him. That's it."

Auntie just smiled. "That's enough," she said.

* * *

The next morning, when I appeared at the Tower in full uniform, gear and all, I was able to march into the Hokage's office unimpeded. Maybe the purpose in my stride kept them from stopping me, or maybe everyone was still used to Misuzu Namikaze waltzing in and out like she owned the place—probably the latter, despite the months gone by—because not a single secretary even paused to ask me my business. I simply went up to the door and let myself in, unannounced.

"Good morning, Lord Hokage," I said in my stiffest, most formal keigo. Minato, who had been examining a set of papers, slowly raised his head to look at me. As I moved to stand at the center of the room, I noticed that Jiraiya was standing by the window, arms crossed. He gave Minato an inscrutable look; I got the impression he was waiting for something.

"Good morning," Minato replied softly, receiving his teacher's wordless stare with what looked almost like resignation. His shoulders slumped ever so slightly as he put down his work. "What is it?"

"I am requesting a mission," I announced, perhaps a bit curtly. "My family is inconvenienced. I would like to return to work."

I was surprised to see Minato actually flinch. Had he had known all along the House was struggling to make ends meet? I was immediately hit with the urge to punch him in the face. What kind of asshole let a household full of orphaned children go bankrupt?

"I understand," he murmured, surprising me somewhat with his willingness. "I… have something I've been meaning to assign you for a while now, anyway. It's been put off for too long."

My curiosity instantly flared, but I held my tongue. I didn't want him thinking I wanted to make small talk or anything. In fact, I was going to murder any rapport that surfaced between us with a rusty axe.

_My trust is not so easily regained, bastard. _

Go ahead, call me spiteful. That's exactly what I am.

"Report to the main gate in an hour," Minato told me, oblivious to the fact that I was currently cussing him out in my head. "You'll meet your team there. Prepare for extended travel. It might be a long trip."

_Might _be a long trip? That was hardly specific. For a second, I wondered if he was being deliberately vague. I considered picking a fight, but that would probably be overreacting; it would probably be uncalled for if I flew off the handle just for that, anyway.

"I understand." I bowed instead. "Thank you, Hokage-sama."

"Suzu—" Minato began as I went to the door, standing up out of his chair.

"I will report to you when I return," I cut him off before he could finish. "Good day."

If I shut the door with a bit more force than necessary, well, I pretended not to notice. In fact, I departed the Tower and roof-hopped all the way home without glancing back even once.

"Success," I declared to the living room once I had I returned to the House. Its inhabitants, my aunt and uncle and even a couple of my agemates, who looked to be on a rare break day or something similar, turned to stare at me.

"Wait," Jinta said, frowning at me. "What does that mean?"

"Mission," I replied, pointing upstairs. "I came back to get travel gear. He's sending me out of the village. May or may not be a long trip, he said."

"What?" Uncle Souhei looked bemused. "I mean, I'm glad he gave you work, but... for your first mission in six months? That's a bit strange."

"He also said it was something that has been put off for too long, if that means anything to you," I offered.

"Doesn't that just mean he's been short of hands?" Akira asked. "Ever since the Kyuubi attack, we've all been crazy busy working on recovering the village. He probably can't spare anyone, not even the ones who have just gotten off suspension."

"Then why did he put me on suspension in the first place?" I grumbled at that. My cousins just shrugged, and Auntie and Uncle sighed. I tamped down on my oncoming mood and went upstairs.

I hadn't done anything remotely ninja in ages, so it took a lot longer than I expected to gather a travel pack. There were clothes, rations, camping gear, weapon maintenance tools, extra kunai and shuriken, hygiene products… I knew I had everything stashed away somewhere, with sealing scrolls to take care of the rest, but I had to tear up the room a bit to find it all. Chiharu probably wasn't going to be pleased to find the mess when she came back, but there was really no helping it—there was no time to clean up. When I glanced at the clock, I found there were only ten more minutes to the meeting time.

"Crap," I muttered, slinging my bag over my shoulder and doing one last frantic pat-down, checking my gear and my clothes before dashing down the stairs.

"Gotta scram," I hollered at the kitchen, running for the door.

"Be careful!" Auntie shouted back. "You haven't taken a mission in ages! Don't push yourself!"

The moment I was out, I was shunshin-ing, pulling myself across the village mid-stride. When my foot met the ground again, it was in front of the gate, and I let out a tiny sigh of relief when I found that, aside from a genin team and their jounin sensei, no one was here yet.

Then I began smoothing my hair down and pulling my sleeves back into order. The months without chakra were definitely already showing; even for my skill level, that Body Flicker had been incredibly sloppy. My level of control had atrophied significantly.

I sighed and looked down at my left hand, remembering the days after it had been crushed and the time I had spent struggling to regain use of it. Well, I consoled myself, at least regaining ninjutsu finesse won't be nearly as difficult as recovering the function of a destroyed appendage. That was something to be thankful for.

I spent the remaining few minutes trying to recalibrate my chakra sense, trying reawaken the ability to passively sense other people. It took a bit of work, but after a few attempts I was ability to faintly feel the surrounding ninja without having to concentrate too hard. Then I realized there were two _very _bright chakra signatures blazing right in front of me.

"Oh!" I snapped my eyes open. To my bewilderment, one Jiraiya of the Sannin was standing there, Kushina Uzumaki at his side. Both had large packs on their backs, and Kushina was dressed in a jounin uniform, her long red hair plaited into a thick braid. She smiled brightly at me.

"I've always wanted to go on a mission with you, Suzu-chan," she said happily, clapping her hands together. "We've never gotten to know each other half as well as I've wanted."

"We meet again, brat," was Jiraiya's greeting. "Told you we would."

"What…" I trailed blankly. No, really, _what?_

"We're going to go fetch Tsunade-sama," Kushina informed. "We don't have a mission scroll, though." She lowered her voice and glanced at the gatekeepers and the genin team. "Because it's a sensitive mission. Saving Rin-chan is our only shot at keeping Obito from really losing it, so we're keeping it off the books."

"It's been determined that Rin Nohara's survival is essential for the defense of the village," Jiraiya quietly continued. "She's our only leverage against Obito. We exhaust a lot of resources keeping him imprisoned, so can't keep him like that forever, and we can't leave that jo-chan the way she is, either. Things would work out best for all parties if we can bring Tsunade-hime home."

For a moment, I could only stare at them, processing their words. Then I put my hands together and gasped, "We're going to save Rin?"

My heart began racing. Rin had been pushed out of my mind for ages; I had been guiltily suppressing any thought of her for this past half-year. But now that the possibility of saving her was before me, I found myself feeling like I was about to explode.

Rin had been around for me during one of the roughest periods of this short life, and she deserved to live. I had driven myself half to insanity trying to make it happen. She was the first step I had ever taken irrevocably changing the canon of Naruto.

Was that effort going to meet fruition?

"We will," Kushina replied. She spoke with incredible certainty. It was not a _I hope we will_ or a i_t's likely we will_, but a solid, unwavering, _we will._ She believed it with all her heart.

My lips parted. Kushina had incredible charisma.

"Is your brat gonna be alright without you?" Jiraiya raised an eyebrow at her. "For that matter, are _you _alright? It hasn't been that long since… well, you know."

"I've got the body of an ox," Kushina laughed in reply. "I'm an Uzumaki, after all. As for Naruto, he'll be fine. Minato isn't as useless as you might think when it comes to diapers. Besides, if worse comes to worst, Biwako-sama can just confiscate him."

"Hiruzen-sensei's wife, eh?" Jiraiya muttered, rubbing the back of his head like he was remembering a bump there.

I blinked, suddenly remembering a question that I'd never gotten the chance to ask. The Kyuubi had obviously been resealed… but into _who_?

"After the strain of her seal breaking, putting it back into Kushina would have killed her," Jiraiya answered lowly, seeing the question on my face. Kushina's grin faded a bit. "It's lucky she lived at all as it was. Naruto's the jinchuuriki now."

"Oh," was all I managed to say in reply. That… was honestly exactly what I had expected. Naruto was pretty much destined to have the Kyuubi with him no matter what happened. There was just too many circumstances for it to happen otherwise.

"Anyway," Kushina hastily broke in, "we ought to get going. Tsunade-sama's not going to bring herself home, after all!"

"You can say _that _again," Jiraiya immediately agreed, dropping the subject like it was a hot potato. As he exaggeratedly rolled his eyes, I decided it would be best for me to do the same.

I had a mission to focus on now, after all.

* * *

**A/N: You've all probably noticed I've gotten rid of the chapter titles. I was rereading a bit last weekend and I found that I was incredibly annoyed by their presence. They were trite, useless, and they weren't even all the same part of speech, so I just said "screw it" and scratched them. I also got rid of the contradictory chapter numbers (where the prologue used to be chapter one, chapter one used to chapter two, etcetera) for the sake of sanity. It was a lot to work, though, so if you've found that the content has gone whack because I messed up a chapter somewhere, let me know.**

**Anyway, thoughts on the chapter? Overall impressions of the Earthlings, now that their introduction is done? Daisuke and Suzu's return to service? Suzu/Minato interaction? Kushina and Jiraiya on Tsunade retrieval? Let me know! Your thoughtful critique is what allows me to write well, after all!**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	27. Age 13: Tsunade Retrieval: Part 1

**Published: 7/23/2015**

* * *

**Age 13: Part 4**

"_I'd say this mission was the beginning of a beautiful friendship."_

"_Wow, it sounds totally creepy when _you _say it, old man…"_

"_I can't deny it's true, though. Jiraiya-sama and I wouldn't be nearly such good friends now if it hadn't come out that we were both literature nuts. And at the risk of sounding weird, I'd say we really _are _good friends."_

"_Well, unfortunately for you, intergenerational friendships always attract suspicious talk. Moreso if the senior portion of that friendship is Jiraiya."_

_At this point in the session, Jiraiya passed out laughing; he had gone through about five bottles of sake._

* * *

"Your favorite color!" Kushina exclaimed.

"Uh… blue is pretty nice," I decided after a moment, scratching my head. "But I guess I like green too."

"Then, favorite food?"

"Potstickers," I immediately replied. I had loved gyoza well before I had been dropped into this universe, so that was a no-brainer.

"Favorite flower?"

"Maybe… geraniums?"

"Favorite season?"

"Hm… probably early summer…"

I had worried for a bit that interacting with Kushina would be awkward; neverminding the fact we had only spoken about two and a half sentences to each other before today, I was currently in a huge fight with her husband. Kushina, though, had quickly mowed down any expectations. Instead of getting angry or awkward, she had filled the way here with talk of hobbies and books and movies, and now, while we were waiting for Jiraiya to finish meeting with a contact on Tsunade's whereabouts, we were sitting together on a tree stump and listing our favorite anythings.

Kushina was, paradoxically, very tomboyish and very feminine. Her interests were right in line with the "traditional" female role—she loved cooking and sewing and making small talk—but she was rowdy enough to give even the uber-machismo men a run for their money. You could tell just by the way she spoke: even though she wasn't gloating when she mentioned stories of getting into fights with other guys, be it over her hair, her unladylike demeanor, or just the fact that she was a kunoichi, it was easy to see she had beat the shit out of them, and she'd done it well. The retelling of Susumu Souma's tale—and of how he would never bathe in the public bathhouses ever again—had had me burning with secondhand embarrassment, and I didn't even know the man.

We were entrenched in a discussion of whether geraniums were prettier as cut or potted flowers when Jiraiya returned, massaging the bridge of his nose in a rare act of unobfuscated vexation. Kushina and I cut off our meandering chatter to stare at him with surprise.

"It's nothing," he grumbled at our questioning looks. "Just… that damn Tsunade. When will she learn?"

Well, that certainly didn't sound like nothing. "What happened?" I asked.

"A fight with some hitmen hired by an angry moneylender. Of course, there's no way they would ever manage to lay a hand on her, but the point still stands." He looked exasperated—exasperated, and maybe just a tiny, microscopically bit worried. "If she's going to fraud people for money, she at least ought to do it _right_…" A sigh. "This complicates things."

"Oh, I see," Kushina said with a look of realization. "She's going be taking evasive measures, right? So our search just got a lot harder."

"Exactly." Jiraiya nodded. "And unfortunately for us, Tsunade is _very _accomplished in evasion."

Evasive measures… in a combat situation—the only situation I had ever really been in myself—that would involve tactics such as splitting up, using bunshin, doubling back and laying false trails, that sort of thing. And though I knew from the Academy that in a city setting, one might don a disguise and spread false rumors—or pay people to give false intel, like innkeepers and roadside merchants—to throw off investigation, I had no idea the actual tricks of the trade were. Not for the first time, I found myself wondering what Minato's intentions for sending me on this mission really were were. Did he actually think I would be useful in bringing Tsunade home? Was this some sort of placating move? How should I respond?

"Well, we'll just start in this city for now," Jiraiya said, and I realized that he had pulled out a map while I had been thinking. His index finger was placed on a dot off one of the main trade roads; for a moment, I wondered with a flash of amusement if this place was anywhere near Otafuku Gai, but alas. We were too far south.

"What's special about this place?" I felt obligated to inquire, just to show that I was on board and ready to participate. No matter what Minato's intentions were, I _would_ be a useful ninja on this mission.

"It's the city where the confrontation took place," Jiraiya replied. "Obviously she'll have covered her tracks, but that doesn't mean we can't try looking around anyway. Even if she hasn't let anything slip, we might be able to pick something up from the other people who are pursuing her."

"Tsunade-sama sure is in high demand, isn't she?" I observed, perhaps a bit dryly. "I wonder how she manages to sleep at night, knowing how many people are chasing her…"

"I wonder how many people are thinking of chasing _you_, little Bloody Threads," Jiraiya pointed out, raising an eyebrow. "You're no Sannin, it's true, but you can't talk like you don't have a reputation, either. I'm sure at least one person out there is looking for your head, if only for the bounty."

"Jiraiya-sama," Kushina frowned rather severely. "That's not nice."

"_I'm_ not nice," he replied, untroubled."You shouldn't be, either. Not in this line of business."

Perhaps if I had not taken such a long leave, I would have taken this exchange in stride, but after spending half a year ensconced by the safe, homely walls of the House and spending time taking care of young children with my mother, I found myself rather alarmed by this reminder of the wider, crueler world. I had managed to forget, I think, that I was technically a mass murderer. And that most of my friends and family were mass murderers. And that other mass murderers were looking to—and probably had the right to, if I was honest—murder me, too.

Kushina, though, did not want any of that gloomy nonsense. It was too lovely a day to be spoiled with brooding, according to her, so instead she began asking me more get-to-know-you questions.

"Tell me about your friends," she urged. "And I don't mean your team, since I knew Rin and Kakashi long before you ever met them. I mean your other friends."

"Well…" I began pensively. My initial reaction was to begin describing Jinta and Chiharu and Akira to her, but it occurred to me that that was probably not the sort of thing she was asking for. And then, suddenly, I found myself saying, "I had two best friends before. Yoshiya and Akihiko."

The enthusiasm on Kushina's face cooled a bit with my use of past tense, but for some reason, I felt like confiding. So I told her, "Before Yoshiya died, he was really quiet, but he was smart. Even though he argued a lot with Akihiko about dumb stuff, I still really enjoyed spending time with him. He always gave me the sweetest smiles," I added, remembering in particular the sunny grin he had given me the day we three had passed our exams.

Surprisingly, a teasing remark from Jiraiya was not forthcoming. Maybe he was being respectful. Or, of course, he just might not have been listening, who knows.

"And before Yoshiya died, Akihiko was really cheerful," I continued musingly. "He was always energetic. He liked Yoshiya the best…" I paused. "Even better than me. Or especially better than me, actually."

"Suzu…"

"He kind of couldn't stand me after Yoshiya died," I related, and not for the first time, I had to wonder just where it had all gone wrong. "He withdrew from Team 11, and he punched me through a tree at our last meeting. Then he ran off to join ANBU and I haven't heard a word from him since."

Literally not a word, since during that hospital encounter, he hadn't spoken a lick to me. He'd talked to the guard, but I hadn't heard his voice at all.

"He punched you through a tree?" Kushina repeated, looking a mix of horrified and positively indignant. I was a little touched that she felt angry on my behalf, considering we hardly knew each other.

"Well, to be fair, I did spit in his face," I confessed. "I… should have known better, really, because it was obvious that he was hurting over Yoshiya more than I was. But we got into a fight and I lost, so I spat on him and he, well, punched me. The tree was just kind of collateral damage."

"Wow," Jiraiya did deign to comment then, giving me a look that had both eyebrows raised. "Orochimaru and I hated each other's guts, and we fought a lot, but we never ended up doing anything like that."

To be honest, even if it was slightly surprising, I had no reaction to that. Jiraiya and Orochimaru, after all, were Jiraiya and Orochimaru; Akihiko and I were Akihiko and I. Our relationships were certainly different, and besides, our animosity had surfaced for completely different reasons than theirs had.

"Rin was really good to me after that whole mess," I sighed, rubbing my forehead. "I… don't know what I would have done if she hadn't been there. Kakashi had still hated me six ways to Sunday back then, and Minato-nii…" I felt my mood immediately begin to sour at his mention, so I cut myself off. "Even if all it was was spending extra time talking to her, she had a way of making things seem better. After all of that, it was nice to be around someone who was just… kind."

Kindness… it was a rare commodity in this universe. Rin and her thoughtless, unselfish altruism was most definitely the exception and not the norm. There was no Hippocratic Oath for these people, after all; medical ninjutsu had only been established by shinobi to lessen military losses. Sure, there were plenty of doctors and iryou-nin who would help a Konoha-nin in a heartbeat, but their compassion was exclusive; Rin had had no such boundaries. It had been that aspect of her that had led her to speak with the alienated Obito Uchiha, and it had been that kindness that had prompted her to call me her family even when she had hardly known me.

I really hoped this mission worked out. In the face of such unflinching _niceness_, it was hard not to feel ashamed and inadequate in comparison. I had to do _something_ to pay her back, for her sake as much as my own.

"But, um, you know…" I began after a moment, not wanting to leave it on such a pessimistic note. "I think I've made a new friend. His name is Tsubasa… he's my age."

"Oh ho?" Jiraiya was immediately grinning.

"Well, Tsubasa and others," I amended. "They're all really cool. I was kind of friendless for a while, but I think I'll be okay from here on out. They're really good people."

"That's good," Kushina said firmly. "Family is important, but so is having good friends. Your friends are the ones who pick you, after all. If you have good friends, there's always someone there to take care of you."

Kushina, I found myself deciding, was a great person. I don't know why I was so being so… _un-shinobi_—maybe it was because I had been away for six months, maybe not—but there was something about her that just let people open up.

"I'll choose you as a friend," I blurted, because really, why wouldn't you want such a kickass big sister-mom person who was fun, confident, and supportive? "Not because you're an in-law or anything, but because I really like you. I… just decided."

For a moment, Kushina was taken aback. Then, with a huge grin, she darted over and lifted me into a big hug, squealing, "You're adorable!" She pressed our cheeks together. "If only Minato could be as frank as you are! I swear, he's so secretive all the time over dumb stuff that doesn't matter. I'm glad you two are fighting. Frankly, he _needs_ a good kick in the balls, and you're the perfect person for it."

Jiraiya half-snorted, half-chortled, crossing his arms as we came to a stop. I squirmed and asked, wide-eyed, "You're _glad _we're fighting?"

"I've been trying to get him to stop his weird perfection complex since we were kids," Kushina explained. "But I never really got it to work. It was hard enough just to get him to stop hiding stuff from _me_. But I think you might succeed where I couldn't. I've already asked a lot of change from him, but you haven't—not yet. You know?"

"I guess?" I twisted my lips. "But… you're _glad _we're fighting?"

"To be honest, I would hardly even call this a fight," Kushina laughed, her Uzumaki heritage shining through. "_Fighting _is beating the shit out of each other, putting laxatives in each other's food, cutting a hole in the back seam of the other person's pants when it goes to the laundry… in my opinion, you two are having a heated argument at the very _worst_."

Wow. I was suddenly very intrigued in what fights in the Uzumaki clan had looked like.

"That's all fine and dandy," Jiraiya cut in dryly, though with good humor, "but we probably s_hould _try getting to town before nightfall." He motioned down the road. "Let's walk and talk, hm?"

Blushing, Kushina set me down. But not before I found myself grinning widely and giving her a hug back.

* * *

Minato had not been lying when he said it would be a long trip. Once we had reached the city where Tsunade had fought the hitmen, it took nearly two weeks to fish out a lead we could follow. As expected, Jiraiya was doing most of the legwork; when it came to spycraft, he was superior to both Kushina and I in every way. In the end, it had mostly just been us running to whatever part of town and doing whatever he told us to do. The mission was quickly shaping up to be not "Jiraiya and Kushina and Suzu go find Tsunade" but "Jiraiya looks for Tsunade with two insignificant assistants."

And then, after those almost two weeks, we spent an entire month chasing traces of Tsunade throughout the countryside. The mission time had officially surpassed the time I'd spent with Kakashi in Kubo's village, making it the longest out-of-village mission I'd ever taken. Homesickness wasn't much of a problem, though, because a week in I learned Kushina was sending letters back to the village with a messenger toad at about every stop we made; Minato, apparently, had summoned it for her before we had departed. I held my pride for about four days before caving and asking if I could send a couple missives along to the House. It bruised my ego to have to rely on Minato even indirectly, but from then on I was rewarded with not only letters from my uncle and aunt and cousins, but surprise ones from Tsubasa and Kyouya as well.

And then, on the forty-seventh day of the mission, we found Tsunade of the Sannin.

Well, more specifically, we found the person grovelling at her door. Purely by chance, while we were en route to a major port city, we came to a stop at an inn and booked two rooms on a floor where a young man was bowing full kowtow at the end of the hall. When we had climbed up the stairs, we had found him with his forehead pressed to the hardwood floor, pleading to a closed door, "Lady Tsunade, I beg of you, please take me as your student."

The three of us immediately came to a halt. For a few flabbergasted seconds, we had only stood there; the teen remained prostrate. Judging by the set of the sun, it looked like he was ready to spend the whole night like that. And if he was willing to do that, then there was a good chance that this really was Tsunade.

Without wasting a moment, Jiraiya was down the hall and knocking on the door, stepping over the boy without a second thought. Startled, he looked up, but Jiraiya ignored him and kept persistently hitting his fist on the wood until, after a full two minutes of knocking, it finally opened.

"I _told _you I am not taking you as a student," Tsunade snarled as she appeared with a burst of not-quite killing intent. Extremely-irritated-I'm-ready-to-stab-you intent, maybe, I would call it. "I am not taking _anyone_ as a student. So for the last time, get _lost_—"

Jiraiya raised an eyebrow, and Tsunade immediately cut herself off. Then she looked down at the alarmed face of the teen still bent over on the ground behind Jiraiya's feet, and then to Kushina and I standing directly behind him.

"The rumors said you were on your way to Port Minami, but I didn't think we'd cross paths on the way there," Jiraiya mused. "I guess we were closer onto your trail than we thought."

"What are you doing here," Tsunade flatly said rather than asked, crossing her arms. The anime Naruto, I decided, did not do her beauty justice at all. Even as she was sourly scowling at her former teammate, I found myself admiring her lovely face and long, blond hair. I could not lie, either: her figure was _amazing_. I had never really been of the thought that big boobs automatically made someone prettier, but damn, even to me, Tsunade looked _good_. I was not a man and I had no carnal interest in women whatsoever, but I found myself thinking I might understand how Jiraiya could still be pining away for her—however quietly—after all these years. When God had put this lady together, he'd picked all the right pieces.

"We came to ask for your assistance, Tsunade-sama," Kushina said as she stepped up. She offered a deep bow, bending at the waist until her long braid nearly touched the ground. "We urgently need you to help—"

"I'm not interested," Tsunade immediately cut her off, turning away. She put a hand on the door and made to shut it, but with startling speed, Jiraiya's arm shot out and held it in place, preventing her. His face held no pretense of silliness; he was dead serious.

The fact that he had his serious face on right from the start seemed to agitate Tsunade. I was a little surprised myself. Was Jiraiya really that concerned about healing Rin? If I were the one trying to talk to the Slug Princess right now, I would understand that kind of gravity, but he had no such attachment to Rin. Maybe he viewed Obito as more of a threat than I had realized.

"What's the matter with you?" Tsunade asked guardedly, turning back around. Her expression was still sour, but now there was a hint of something else to it. Curiosity? No… trepidation. It seemed that the appearance of Jiraiya had brought trouble to her before. Well, _that_ wasn't unexpected.

"I wouldn't be here if there was any other choice," he told her gravely. "You know I don't bother you unless there's no other option."

"I _do _know," Tsunade grumbled. "That's why I hate seeing you."

_Wow, _ouch. Forget rawst berries—that wasn't a burn, that was a beheading. Like the excellent shinobi he was, however, Jiraiya took the blow in stride, continuing to stare down at her with that scary, piercing gaze he so rarely unveiled. The two Sannin were immediately locked into a battle of wills.

At the sixth minute, Kushina and I exchanged glances. If this kept up, we might be stuck on this retrieval mission for another month. Someone had to do something.

"Umm," I finally said, deciding something absurd was needed to break the tension. "Tsunade-sama, you're pretty. Can you show me how to get my hair like yours?"

Jiraiya and Tsunade broke off their staring contest to give me incredulous looks. I smiled sheepishly and held up my hands in a gesture of peace. Jiraiya began to laugh.

"_Ugh_," Tsunade finally groaned, throwing her arms up. "Fine. Come inside and tell me what nonsense you've gotten yourself into this time, oaf."

* * *

"So who is she?" Tsunade grouchily jabbed a finger at me, which set me to wondering whether she was purposely being extra rude in an attempt to chase us off. "I remember you, Kushina Uzumaki, but I've never seen this kid before."

"That's Suzu Namikaze," Jiraiya said before I could reply. "Call her imouto-chan, if you want."

I raised an eyebrow, but didn't protest. Instead, I inspected the room we had been invited into. Plain furnishings, but clean. Two beds, two suitcases, no sign of Shizune or Tonton.

"So what's the big idea, sending his wife and his kid sister along?" Tsunade asked, flopping into an armchair. "I understand why you're here, but them?"

Kushina made a face, and it became apparent to me that it was proving to be a great endeavor for her to hold her tongue. The glance she shot me seemed to say that if this kept up, she ought not be held accountable for her actions.

"What, can't you tell?" the Toad Sage asked, looking amused. Tsunade treated him with a withering glare.

"If I could, I wouldn't be asking. I'm not in the mood for games, Jiraiya."

"Well, then. Logos, ethos, and pathos," he replied. I blinked and swiveled my head around to look at him, not having heard these terms since my high school AP Language and Composition class.

"What?" Tsunade's eyebrows lifted.

"Logos, ethos, and pathos," Jiraiya repeated. "They're the basis of rhetorical writing. I," he gestured to himself, "am here for the appeal of logic, since I know well enough the threat the village is under right now, and am articulate enough to tell it to you. Kushina has been sent along for the ethos appeal, to show you that the new Hokage is a man of principle who would be here talking to you himself had circumstances permitted it—the best he can do otherwise, of course, is to send you his spouse."

I found myself giving Jiraiya an admiring look. For a man who wrote smut, he was very eloquent indeed. Then I processed the meaning of his words and found that I was left to represent what was, in my opinion, the most tasteless of the three appeals.

"Does that mean I'm only here for pity points?" I asked indignantly. "When I get home, I'm going to punch Minato in the face for real."

"Doesn't sound much like she's on board with this new Hokage," Tsunade observed. Kushina let out a terribly unladylike snort-laugh.

"And that's the genius of the argument," Jiraiya agreed. Then he gave me a grin promising mischief. "Well, you did a good enough job trying to get our hearts to bleed for you at the start of this trip, Suzu. Why don't you give Tsunade-hime a go?"

My cheeks immediately colored. "I wasn't fishing for sympathy, if that's what you're implying," I asserted rather hotly. "Kushina-nee wanted to know, so I shared! That's all."

"We believe you," Kushina quickly assured me, though Jiraiya's smirk seemed to say otherwise. She shot him a dirty look. Tsunade just sighed.

"I'll have you know I am also an excellent rhetorician," I huffed, crossing my arms. "…Well, I'm not a _bad_ one, anyway." In the realm of the English language, that is. I had aced both my lit and lang classes and maxed their scores on the respective AP Exams, but I'd never tested my magniloquence in Japanese. Though that, evidently, was about to change.

"Alright, then, let's hear it." Jiraiya sat back in his chair smugly, and I belatedly realized that I had just been manipulated into a position where I had to do my utmost to fulfill the mission objective.

"You didn't have to go that far," I muttered tetchily, crossing my arms. "I'm not so petty as to let a personal quarrel interfere with a mission. Besides, I'm emotionally motivated to succeed, too, you know."

"Then your speech will be all the better for it," he replied triumphantly.

I glared balefully at him before taking a deep breath and letting it out as a sigh. Then I turned to the expectantly awaiting Tsunade and hoped that she wasn't feeling _too _cranky. I was in no mood to be ripped to shreds over a sob story that I had effectively been coerced into telling.

"The person who needs your help is named Rin Nohara…" I began.

* * *

**A/N: I apologize for the long wait. Though Glory—the main story, anyway—hasn't advanced much until now, however, I've had an extremely productive month in terms of fanfiction. Akihiko now has numerous sidestory tidbits that extend well into the Age 24 arc, and Land of a Thousand Rising Tides now has a structured plot, outline, and even specific character notes and naming themes. My other Naruto SI/OC fic that is set in the Era of Warring States—tentatively titled "Days," the one I've listed under the plot bunnies section in my profile—has undergone a lot of refinement. I even had the inspiration to go on a major drawing binge for my characters, and while I can't claim to be a master artist, I did post a link to a picture of Suzu in my profile. Shame that ff dot net links decided to stop working…**

**Before I say anything else, though, I want to drop a word of thanks to the readers who leave me incredibly thoughtful, detailed, and frank reviews. I really appreciate these people very much. I lack any sort of editor whatsoever—I don't have a beta or anything—and there are times when I begin to lose track of all my plot threads. The people who point out the story's inconsistencies and slips and weak spots do me a great service when they leave me their critique. The fact that they have the grace to do so politely and supportively, in a manner that encourages me to keep on writing, is incredibly touching. Glory is far from a masterwork, and it could hardly be considered the best of anything (though it is perhaps a **_**better**_ **piece of writing, if I may be so presumptuous ;P) but thanks to these people I can write it to very limits of my ability. So to those reviewers—sincerely, I thank you! Thank you very much. There are lots of bits I wish I had done differently, and there are times when I feel like quitting or starting over, but thanks to you guys I think I'll be able to write this story to the end, even if there are sections of it that make me want to cringe.**

**And with all of that said, don't forget to leave me more feedback! Not much really happened in this chapter, but I have to put my plot setup somewhere, and I didn't want to cut things off in a weird place. More substantial stuff will happen next time! Probably.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	28. Age 13: Tsunade Retrieval: Part 2

**Published: 7/25/2015**

**Edited: 8/9/2015**

* * *

**Age 13: Part 5**

_"K-Kushina…"_

"_Oh, don't give me that look. She was asking for it! Besides, I was standing in on your honor, wasn't I? Did you just expect me to sit there and let her call you names?"_

* * *

Jiraiya, it seemed, really was going for a rhetoric attack, because as soon as I finished relaying my part of the story, he jumped right in. Out came numbers, domestic ramifications, political problems both international and not, the impact on the recovery of the village, and a thorough description on just how much village security was being eaten up by Obito's imprisonment. Kushina then offered the personal request of Minato Namikaze for Tsunade to come home, along with a reassurance that she would be allowed to leave the village as soon as she finished her task. She would also, of course, be paid for her work.

Unsurprisingly, Tsunade was not persuaded. The next fifteen minutes were spent desperately trying to change her mind, but all attempts were futile. I became thoroughly convinced that one might take every dictionary in the world, look for the word "pigheaded," and exchange its definition for a picture of Tsunade without diminishing it at all.

"I'm not interested," she stubbornly repeated. "The Hokage is a fool for thinking such a ridiculous plan will work, and you're fools for believing in him. You're wasting your time. Go home."

Kushina, it appeared, had finally had enough. "Come outside, Tsunade-sama," she said, standing up. She was manifestly not pleased.

"I'm not going anywhere," Tsunade informed, flicking a spot of dirt off her shirt. "Go run along home and cry to your idiot Hokage that you've failed. You can't—"

She was cut off as a hand shot forward and seized the front of her shirt. With her red hair flaring out behind her, Kushina put her face an inch from Tsunade's and said, "Insult my husband one more time, hag, I dare you. Now come outside and _fight me._"

I found myself slowly inching behind Jiraiya. Jiraiya, for the record, looked one quarter incredulous and one quarter delighted. On one hand, after all, a catfight of epic proportions was about to ensue. But then on the other, the cats who would be fighting were Kushina and Tsunade.

_Kushina _and _Tsunade_.

The remaining two quarters, of course, were just plain horrified.

* * *

The irony of Tsunade getting into a fight with an Uzumaki over the honor of the Hokage on a retrieval mission was not lost on me. But Kushina, I knew, was leagues ahead of a twelve-year-old Naruto in skill, and complete mayhem was almost guaranteed. As the two women took their places across from each other in the dusky dim street, I found myself hiding behind Jiraiya's back again.

Even in a situation like this, though, it seemed that the Pervy Sage couldn't pass up a chance for some lewd humor. "If you wanted to stare at my behind that much, you know, you should have just said so," he told me, patting me on the head and reminding me of just how short I actually was.

"If your fat ass is going to be my meatshield against the impending destruction, I'll sing its praises all day long," I shot back crossly, giving a chakra-reinforced kick to the back of his knee for good measure. Jiraiya actually grunted and held up his hands in response, which was a promising indication of the progress I'd made while re-training myself over the past month and a half.

"You probably ought to take cover, too," I advised the teenager who had been begging at Tsunade's door; he had followed us downstairs. His hair was a ruffled black, his eyes a light brown, and he was dressed in a sleeveless grey yukata of the style common to Fire Country's inhabitants.

"Ah…" he said, looking startled to have been addressed. Well, considering the way we had completely blown past him in our haste to get to Tsunade, that probably wasn't unexpected.

"Who are you, anyway?" Jiraiya asked, giving the boy a sidelong glance. I would not describe the look he sent him as suspicious, per se, but it wasn't exactly friendly, either.

"My name is Kagemori Aiba," the teen immediately replied in very formal language, throwing in a deep bow as well. "It is an honor to meet you, Jiraiya-sama."

"Oh, so you know me," Jiraiya hummed, blasé.

"Of course! I have admired the Sannin since I was a child," Kagemori explained earnestly. "I have always dreamed of meeting them."

"And you want to become Tsunade's student?"

"Yes. You see, my father was a chuunin during the Second Shinobi World War, and when he had been fighting in Suna—"

"He was poisoned and Tsunade was the one who saved his life with the cure," Jiraiya cut him off, looking unsurprised.

Kagemori blinked. "Yes, exactly," he said, astonished. "How did you…?"

"Hundreds of kids have tried to apprentice themselves to Tsunade for the exact same reason," the Toad Sage replied. "I would give it up, kid. She's far more cold-hearted than you think, and if you don't have one hundred percent accurate chakra control, you can't learn anything from her anyway. Save yourself the trouble."

"...That was a bit harsh," I said as Kagemori went silent, eyes wide. "Was that really necessary?"

"You're too soft, kid." Jiraiya gave me a slight frown. "And it's the truth, anyway. Besides, if she's refusing to help _us_," he said emphatically, "what makes you think she'll trouble herself for him?"

Well, that was true too… but still. There was moment of silence. Then Jiraiya's frown deepened a bit, and he turned his head to look back at the ashen-faced teen still standing by the door.

"Aiba, you said?" he asked, brow furrowing. Silently, Kagemori nodded.

Any conversation that might have followed was immediately cut off, though, by an almighty explosion of rock and gravel. Snapping my attention back to Kushina and Tsunade, I was greeted by the sight of the Sannin throwing wild potshot punches at Kushina, who was dodging and blocking at an equally frenetic pace. At the last minute, the redhead sprung to the side, and Tsunade's bare first crashed into the ground, sending dust and debris soaring into the air. Seeing a chunk of rock hurtling towards us, I immediately dove behind Jiraiya again; he actually had to throw out a hand and break it in two to avoid getting his face smashed in. Kagemori let out a yelp and fell onto his behind, barely avoiding having his feet crushed by one of the halves.

The Red-Hot Habanero was not at the level of the Sannin, I knew, but _damn_ was she putting Tsunade through her paces. Her taijutsu was lightning fast, and though Tsunade's blocks were unwavering, the solid, resonant _thud _of each of Kushina's strikes made me ache with imagined pain just by hearing it. If that kept up, Tsunade was going to have some terrible bruises come tomorrow morning. In fact—I gasped as the redhead drew her fist back and managed to throw a megaton punch right into Tsunade's jaw, sending her flying back a good fifteen feet.

"Holy shit!" I grabbed Jiraiya by the arm and shook him. "_Holy_ shit, did you _see _that?"

He looked stunned. "I've never seen anyone slug Tsunade like that in my life," he told me, disbelieving.

Tsunade didn't stay down long, however. She was on her feet in an instant, and her face, which now had an incredibly vivid red splotch on it, took on an expression of intense concentration. Kushina spread her feet apart and sank into a deeper stance, smacking her fist against her hand in loud, brazen challenge. Even though the match had just started, the road was already looking like someone had taken a jackhammer and gone to town tearing it up.

"I don't know who I would rather have on my side," I muttered.

Unfortunately, though, Kushina landed no further hits that day. In fact, that was about the point where Tsunade began kicking her ass; my sister-in-law's face soon began a frequent and extended acquaintance with the ground. Like a true Uzumaki, however, every time she went down, she picked herself back up and went right back to throwing those same megaton punches.

"What the hell is _wrong_ with you?" Tsunade was finally compelled to ask after Kushina had rolled to her feet for the fifteenth time and launched into a vicious dropkick. "You're obviously not going to win. Why are you letting yourself get pounded so badly?" For emphasis, the blond performed a flawless sidestep and drove her fist right into Kushina's stomach. I cringed as the redhead ploughed head first into the crag-filled street.

"What the hell is wrong with me?" Kushina panted once she had drawn herself off of the ground, swiping her sleeve across her face before settling back into a fighting stance. "The better question is what's wrong with _you_, coward." She spat on the ground; her saliva was colored a concerning pinkish-red.

"_Coward_?" Tsunade repeated incredulously. "Who are you calling a _coward_?"

Kushina's purple-gray eyes were full of contempt. "Any kunoichi as good as you who refuses to help her village is a coward."

Tsunade let out a scoff, but the sheer scorn in Kushina's gaze seemed to unsettle her. To her credit, though, I had never met someone with as cowing a glare as Kushina's. I would be unsettled, too.

"I can't believe Konoha has to ask for help from a person like you." Kushina turned her nose away. "The village doesn't deserve to be associated someone so pathetic."

It was not the words themselves that angered Tsunade; it was more, I think, the absolute conviction that Kushina said them with. For a moment, all she could do was stare open-mouthed; I doubted very many people could have called one of the war hero-Sannin a coward to her face.

Then she snapped her jaw shut. "Who cares about the goddamned village anyway?" the Slug Princess snarled, raising an arm and charging forward. "If some maniac wants to destroy Konoha, he can go ahead and do it!"

When Tsunade's knuckles connected with her forehead, I thought for sure that Kushina would end up in a crater in the ground. But she put a foot back, stayed upright, and, even as blood began trickling down her face, seized Tsunade's wrist and yanked her forward. Their heads cracked together, and then the blood was leaking from Tsunade's forehead, too.

She froze, eyes going wide.

"I've never met a woman as big a fucking bitch as you," Kushina snarled back, heedless of Tsunade's sudden look of trauma. "Maybe _you_ can take Konoha for granted, but _I_ spent years making it into my home. I don't care if you're just saying things you don't mean because you're angry; that place and every person in it is precious to me. Don't you _dare_ speak of it like that again."

It was not her grip on Tsunade's wrist, I knew, that kept the Sannin from dodging the subsequent teeth-dislodging punch to the face. It was not even the hemophobia. It was the sheer force of Kushina's personality.

How do I know? Easy: the whole entire street had been frozen for the past ten minutes.

And then, as Tsunade was on the ground with a shaking hand over her bloodied mouth, Shizune chose to appear. Tonton was bouncing obliviously at her heels, and she had a bag of groceries in her arms.

* * *

"I am so sorry for Tsunade-shishou's rudeness," Shizune apologized for the umpteenth time as she healed the gash on Kushina's forehead. "Did you say blood came out when you spat? Are you having a hard time breathing? Do you feel like any of your ribs are broken?"

"I just bit my tongue when I hit the ground, that's all," Kushina assured her, somehow managing to look no worse for the wear despite being covered in dirt and blood. Considering the _number_ of times she had hit the ground, I was honestly impressed she was still in one piece. Truly, I thought, this woman is the mother of Naruto Uzumaki.

"You fight like a pack of dogs, Kushina-nee," I said with no small amount of admiration. Kushina shot me a wide grin and two thumbs up.

"I'll say," Jiraiya muttered, shaking his head. "When Minato said you'd be coming along, Kushina, I don't think _this _was what he had in mind."

"Do you think I overdid it?" she frowned, taking the cold compress Shizune offered her and holding it to her cheek. "I haven't let loose like that in a while. Not since I became pregnant with Naruto, anyway."

(Shizune, by the way, had treated us with a very shrill and very horrified _ahii _upon hearing that Kushina had had a baby about six months ago.)

"I can't judge whether this is a good thing or not," Jiraiya sighed, massaging his temples, "but if we're lucky, maybe this will help us in the long run… maybe."

"Do you think knocking her teeth out will have been enough to convince her?" I asked curiously. No one had aired out their tragic past in that fight, so I doubted any Talk no Jutsu magic would be happening. "She put them right back in, anyway."

In fact, by the time we had been up the stairs, Tsunade had healed herself of over half her injuries, though she had been trembling the whole while. Kushina, sparing no regard, had marched past in pride, wearing her bloody cuts and bruises like badges of honor.

"No, not at all." Jiraiya shook his head. "If anything, she'll be even more opposed to coming back to the village now."

Kushina had the grace to look embarrassed; my eyebrows rose.

"Then how can this help at all?" I asked.

"Because now she knows we're serious," the Sannin replied. "It's one thing to be told of a threat politely while sitting down in the room of a nice, cozy inn. It's another to be punched across the street over it."

"Well, actually, I punched her across the street more because she was badmouthing Minato..."

"Anyway, we'll have to stick close and make sure not to lose her before we can convince her," Jiraiya went on, ignoring this pointedly. "Shizune, will you let us know when you plan to set out again?"

"Of course, Jiraiya-sama," Tsunade's assistant immediately agreed.

Shizune was two years older than Kakashi, making her about four years my senior and therefore seventeen. She had been away from the village for around three and a half years, and though she was too loyal to leave Tsunade and return to Konoha on her own, it was obvious that she was more than a little homesick. The opportunity for Tsunade to go back had excited her incredibly.

She was also already quite competent in iryou ninjutsu. After making sure Tsunade wasn't in too terrible shape, she had immediately come over to our room and offered to heal Kushina as an apology. Despite the fact that the fight had triggered a mild episode of Tsunade's blood phobia, it seemed her apprentice was harboring no ill will. Shizune was, all in all, very mature and understanding.

"I'll excuse myself for now, then," she said after she finished giving Kushina's pupil dilation a checkover. "Tsunade-shishou is probably not going to sleep well tonight, so I'll have to get started on some calming teas right away." I noticed her grimace a bit as she was on her way out.

"Serves her right, the dumb _babaa,_" Kushina grumbled, and I was suddenly hard-pressed to conceal my smile over the fact that she was using the exact same insulting nickname her son had come up with. "Let her have nightmares. I'll sleep better for it."

"You are definitely more vindictive than I was led to believe," Jiraiya observed. Kushina harrumpthed.

"I hate people like that," she muttered by way of explanation. "Looking down on people and never thinking about all the good things they have. So many ninja would trade everything to just to _have_ a village, let alone be an esteemed member of one." Her gaze turned a bit wistful. "I was lucky to have Konoha when _my _village was gone."

I guess it made sense that Kushina took Tsunade's apathy—or antipathy, however you chose to view it—so personally. She had spent years being an "outsider" in our village, and she held the regard of the people in it very highly. Plus, when you were married to the man who basically _was _Konoha, you probably would take a declaration like that rather badly.

"Now that I stop to think about it, Tsunade probably resents you quite a bit, Kushina," Jiraiya frowningly realized. "Not that you could do anything about it. She was just born unlucky, that Tsunade."

It took me a moment to process that, but I connected the dots soon enough. Kushina, though, frowned and asked, "What is that supposed to mean?"

Jiraiya was silent for a moment, contemplating. Then he nodded his head, deciding, and held up three fingers. "One," he began, "you are happily married. Two," he then pointed at me, "this little brat calls you neechan."

"Eh?" I blinked.

"And three," he continued, "your husband has dreamed of being the Hokage since he was a child."

What did—oh. Enlightened, I turned wide eyes to Kushina.

She and Tsunade were perfect foils. Both of them were older sisters—or an older sister figure, in Kushina's case—and both of them had fallen in love with men who had dreamed of becoming the Hokage. They were nearly exactly the same—except for the fact that where everything had gone wrong for Tsunade, it had gone right for Kushina. She had been able to marry the man of her dreams, and the man of her dreams had made _his_ dream a reality. The similarities were painfully obvious… in the most painful way.

"Maybe it's not my place to tell you her personal history," Jiraiya began, sobering a bit now, "but I think it's necessary, considering the impact it has on this mission. Kushina, you and Tsunade have a lot more in common than you think…"

And so it came, the story of Nawaki and Dan and the cursed necklace. And the hemophobia. I listened silently, watching Kushina's face. Even if she was explosive and short-tempered, let never be said that she was hard-hearted; by the time the explanation was over, her mulish expression had softened into outright sympathy.

"I see," she said softly. "...That doesn't make abandoning the village any better, but at the very least, I won't hold a grudge. That wouldn't be fair."

"I appreciate that," Jiraiya replied. There was a moment of heavy silence; then he suddenly turned around and looked at me. "You've been awfully quiet, kid," he said, giving me a scrutinizing look.

I paused; then I wondered how I could tell him that I had already known. Kushina knew that I was privy to a lot of info that a normal kid wouldn't have, but she _didn't_ know that that was because I was from a different universe, and it wouldn't do to let that slip here. In the end, I just tried to give him a meaningful look, and after a moment he thankfully shrugged and turned away.

"Well, now we're all aware of how complex the situation really is," he muttered, rolling a shoulder. "It'll probably be twice as hard when she realizes I've spilled the beans. Ugh," he groaned, "I don't know about you two, but I'm exhausted just thinking about it."

Between our arrival, the futile appeals, the fight, and this discussion, the sun had long since set. I suddenly became aware of a throbbing ache in my shoes and shoulders.

"We should probably head straight to to bed, huh?" Kushina sighed, looking out the window and coming to the same conclusion. "I guess I'll just write Minato in the morning, then…"

"If you're feeling lonely, I'll keep you company tonight," Jiraiya immediately offered, perking up and wiggling his fingers at her with a lecherous grin. We gave him identical flat looks. "Ouch. Fine, fine, I get the picture."

"Suzu is company enough," Kushina declared, scooping me up and giving me a hug. Immediately feeling warm and fuzzy on the inside, I gave her a big smile and hug back.

Jiraiya went away sulking, and Kushina and I changed into nightclothes. Since it was a small single room, there was only one futon, but I had spent my entire life sharing sleeping space with other people, and had rolled onto my cousins' futons just as often as they had rolled onto mine. Kushina didn't mind either; apparently, she had spent many sleepovers like this as a child.

We usually talked a bit before falling asleep, but tonight, she was rather quiet. In the silence, there was nothing to do but stare at the ceiling-shadows casted by the moonlight and wait for sleep to come. I traced their edges with my eyes, mind wandering; then, just as I was beginning to nod off, Kushina whispered, "I'm glad Minato is alive."

I was dedicated in maintaining my grudge, but when I found myself immediately trying to say the reverse, I had to stop and rethink my words. "I'm not," I had been about to say.

"I'm not," meaning "I would rather have him dead."

Would I rather have him dead? He was an asshole, he had lied to me, and he had kicked me out of the Forces for half a year for trying to help save the village. I was not happy with him. I had vowed not to trust him again. And I…

I had taken a sledgehammer to the canon for the sake of keeping him alive.

"...I am, too," I whispered back, burying my face in my pillow.

I couldn't tell whether that realization made me sad or not.

* * *

We spent another day at the inn before setting off again. Tsunade did her utmost to pretend that we didn't exist, but it was rather difficult, considering we were completely out in the open, doggedly following her every step. And that we were being accompanied by her other follower.

"Why are _you_ still here?" she demanded of Kagemori, who was walking two steps behind me with a travelling staff on his shoulder, a bindle tied at its end.

"I haven't given up," Kagemori answered quietly, his eyes fixed on the ground in front of him. "I want to become your student no matter what, Tsunade-sama."

"So you're going to stalk me all over the country?" she scowled. Tellingly, Kagemori was silent.

"I warned him," Jiraiya immediately informed, warding off responsibility. "He's here completely on his own."

"I haven't given up," Kagemori repeated determinedly, to himself more than to us. "I won't give up."

Kagemori, it seemed, really _had_ stayed outside Tsunade's door all night. We hadn't seen him at all during the day yesterday, so we had assumed he'd left, but apparently he'd only gone to take a bath and find some food. He was only a few years older than me, but I had to admire his conviction. Especially considering that he technically wasn't a ninja at all.

Upon coaxing, he had shared with me that though his father—and _his_ father, and his father before that—had been a ninja, he had never studied the shinobi arts. He knew some basic iryou-ninjutsu, but that was because his older sister had been a medic-nin before she'd died during the war.

"After she was gone, I didn't know what to do," he admitted. "But that's when I remembered Tsunade-sama. So I left the village to find her."

"And you actually found her," I said, impressed. And it _was _impressive; Kushina and I had had no idea where to look, and it had taken Jiraiya weeks to locate her. Considering that Kagemori was neither a ninja nor Tsunade's childhood friend, I'd say that was quite an achievement.

"Maybe you should train him instead, Jiraiya-sama," Kushina suggested with a grin. "He would make a great addition to your spy network."

Unsurprisingly, the idea did not appeal to Kagemori. What _was_ surprising, though, was the fact that there was an equal amount of reluctance on Jiraiya's face. Up until now, he had been content to regard Kagemori with perfect indifference. Why was he developing an aversion now?

I suppose I should have taken that as a sign of the trouble to come.

* * *

**A/N: Surprise! Double update!**

**As I was rewatching the Sannin one-hour fight special, I got really pumped up. You can probably tell that I'm drawing some pretty blatant parallels, but I couldn't help it—it was a ****_great _fight****. Too bad Orochimaru hadn't died right then and there. It would have saved a lot of stupid story bullshit down the line, and Tsunade would have been all the more awesome for it.**

**Anyway, enjoy! Don't forget to drop me a line and tell me your thoughts.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	29. Age 13: Tsunade Retrieval: Part 3

**Published: 7/26/2015**

**Edited: 8/9/2015 to tweak the end of the fight a bit.**

* * *

**Age 13: Part 6**

_"You never told me about this..."_

_"You didn't need to know. Besides, if I had, I'm sure you would've have yanked me right back out of the Forces again. And it's not like we were on the best of speaking terms back then, either."_

_"I... you're right. It's just__—it's not easy to swallow... that's all."_

* * *

"Suzu, letter for you!"

Blinking awake, I sluggishly rolled out of my sleeping bag and shuffled over to Kushina, who was wide awake and beaming. She was quite an early riser; she already gotten up, bathed in the nearby river, and cooked breakfast. I, on the other hand, was my usual morning self—crazy-haired and drool-faced, that is.

"Here," she said, handing me a thin scroll.

"Thanks," I mumbled sleepily, tearing off the seal and rolling it open. Then I snapped out of my drowsiness. "Oh, it's from Tsubasa!"

"Your boyfriend?" Jiraiya piped up from his seat on a nearby stump. He had taken the dawn watch, so he'd been up for a few hours now as well. "He liiikes you," he teased, rolling his tongue like a dumb blue cat from another shounen anime.

"Well, ojisan did give him permission to flirt with me," I said thoughtfully, sitting down to peruse the missive.

"What?" Kushina gasped, darting over with a hopeful expression. She was, I had soon learned, a truly diehard romance fan. "Really?"

"What, are you being serious?" Jiraiya immediately looked skeptical. "That hardass Souhei did? I don't believe you."

"It's true," I assured him. "I'm a big girl now, so I'm free to date." Not that I hadn't been a "big girl" for a while now. And that he hadn't known it.

(Huh, I wonder how Jiraiya would react if he found out Uncle Souhei was from the same universe I was. Or if he found out there were _several _of us.)

"That's great!" Kushina squealed, hands on her cheeks. "You're almost the exact same age I was when I fell in love with Minato! Ooh, how exciting!"

"You're so noisy first thing in the morning, shut up," Tsunade groaned from across the clearing, pulling her blanket over her head. We had just left a huge gambling town last night, so she was expectedly hungover. Shizune was still snoozing away beside her; Kagemori was sleeping a couple feet away from our side of the campsite.

"Hmm, would I date Tsubasa?" I murmured to myself contemplatively. Well, he wasn't bad-looking, and he was nice enough, even if he did put his foot in his mouth on occasion. We shared a lot of common ground, too, and as Hideaki had pointed out at the meeting, we were matched perfectly in age. Something to consider, I guess.

"Hehe," Kushina giggled, seeing that I wasn't opposed. I couldn't help but smile at her, amused.

"Ah, must be nice to be young," Jiraiya sighed dramatically, looking at us both with an overly-wistful gaze. I rolled my eyes and turned my attention back to the letter.

_Hi, Suzu!_

_Hope your mission is going well. You've been away for like two months now and it sucks, since we just got to meet each other, but I guess otherwise things have been okay. Make sure you come by Kyouya's as soon as you get back. I'm pestering him into letting me build a treehouse, and it would be awesome if you could come and make a secret hideout with me. I haven't had a secret treehouse hideout in forever._

_Hideaki told me he would help out if I could convince Kyouya to let me use the big sugar maple near the back gate. I'm pretty excited, though I hope he won't bring Asshole Aoi along with him. You haven't met him, but let me tell you, he's a total prick. I can't imagine how those two are friends._ Here there was a little squiggle of illegible words, too small to read, but judging by the upside-down exclamation point a few accent marks, he had written something unflattering in Spanish. _Anyway, though, I told Nana and the boss and the others to start gathering up rugs and cushions. I'm telling you, this treehouse _will _be the best._

The letter went on to detail more treehouse ideas, and even included a surprisingly detailed and well-done sketch and floorplan, full of pointing arrows and dimensions.

"Wow, that's really impressive," Kushina remarked, looking over my shoulder at the drawing.

"It kind of is," I agreed, tilting my head and holding the scroll away at arm's length for a better look. "Looks like he's really serious about it. Hope Kyouya says yes."

_Well, that's pretty much all that's new with me. I ran a couple of missions this week, but it was all boring perimeter patrol and gate duty. My teammates don't want to try to take missions out of the village, which is such a drag. Can't you tell me more about your mission? I know you said it was a secret, but at least tell me where you are! Are you still in Fire Country? Are you overseas? _

_Write me back soon!_

_Tsubasa_

When I got to the end, a piece of paper fell out onto my lap. Curious, I picked it up and found it to be a flat origami rose, folded out of patterned paper.

"Oh my God, he's so _cute_!" Kushina squealed again. "Minato wasn't half as charming as this even when we had actually been _dating_!"

It was pretty well done; the corners were sharp, and the creases were crisp and clean. I noticed, though, that where the four points of the paper met in the middle, one of the edges was folded back very deliberately. Feeling a creeping suspicion come on, I waited until we were on the road again and everyone was lost in their own thoughts to take it out again and pull the flap back. The paper flower unfolded, revealing the message written in English inside.

_Daisuke came to the last meeting looking for you._

Startled, I quickly refolded the paper and stuck it back into my pocket when Kushina glanced back at me. Misunderstanding me completely, she gave me a wink and an impish smile. I didn't protest at her knowing look; my thoughts were already leaping away in a completely different direction.

Daisuke Sarutobi was looking for me? He had come to a meeting for a second time after seven years of absence to see me again? My brow creased as a sudden sense of foreboding overcame me.

What did he want?

* * *

Furisode City, so named for the two curving rivers that flanked the city like a maiden's kimono sleeves, was where the trouble began. Oh, things had started ordinarily enough. We had found another inn to stay at, Kagemori had gone off to send a letter home to his aunt, and Kushina had stayed behind at the inn to write to Minato while Jiraiya and I went shopping for provisions. But then, while we had been in the process of sealing a bunch of jerky into scrolls, discussing whether or not we could bribe Tsunade to come back to the village, a hand seized the back of Jiraiya's collar.

"Wha—"

He fell over as he was yanked back, and we were both startled to see the Slug Sannin herself standing over us, arms akimbo. "What was that for?" the Toad Sage petulantly demanded, swinging himself back upright. I hastily shoved the rest of the food into my own scroll before gathering everything up and putting it into my pack.

"Come with me," she tersely said, and, giving no other explanation, began marching off back towards the inn. Exchanging looks, Jiraiya and I grabbed our stuff before following after her.

"So, what's the matter, Princess Tsunade?" Jiraiya asked once we had arrived back at our rooms, not sounding _quite_ sardonic, but something close. Tsunade, ignoring him, put a hand into the fold of her kimono-style blouse and pulled out a piece of paper.

"Shizune's been kidnapped," she announced, slamming it onto the table. I jumped; Jiraiya's eyebrows shot up, and he reached forward to take the note. "She's being held ransom for my gambling debts. It's the same hitmen those moneylenders hired."

_What_? Well, that was certainly _not_ something I had been expecting. I didn't think that this was anything that had happened in the original timeline, but what with the mess I'd been making of the canon, I guess I really shouldn't have been surprised.

Jiraiya, consummate ninja as he was, knew an opportunity when he saw one. "And what do you want us to do about it?" he asked shrewdly, setting the paper down and jumping on the chance for some leverage. Tsunade tsked and glared.

"I need you to help me get her back," she huffed, crossing her arms. "There are about eight of them, if they haven't changed up their group since we last encountered them. They weren't hard to defeat, but they're all skilled enough that I can't deal with so many of them in a hostage situation."

Meaning: I'll probably accidentally kill Shizune if I go all out of them.

"Besides, I've never smelled such an obvious trap in my life. The smarter choice is to have you go while I rescue her."

"So you want us to be bait, eh?" Jiraiya crossed his arms as well. "Sounds risky. What's in it for us?"

Tsunade scowled. For a moment, I wondered if she was just going to rescind her request and just go get Shizune herself—it probably wasn't beyond her ability, as skilled a shinobi as she was—but something seemed to make her err on the side of caution. Well, when all was said and done, Shizune probably _was _very important to her. Between being made to take a job she didn't want and risking the life of her assistant-student-travelling companion, she would probably rather just bite the bullet.

"I'll consider coming back to help with your fool's errand if you do," she muttered, sour. "_Maybe_. But don't get your hopes up."

"Hmm." The Toad Sage began tapping a finger on his bicep, looking thoughtful—_too_ thoughtful, actually. Then he gave her a sharp grin. "You put up a good act, but I don't trust you. I know you'll run away the second the group is split. You and Shizune will obviously have a location you've both agreed to go to if you were to be split up, and she's a clever girl. If she hasn't escaped already and you're _not _actually trying to cop a con on us, she could easily slip away after we get her and meet you there."

"Tch." Tsunade looked away, and I was startled to realize that that was _exactly_ what she had been planning to do, and I had fallen for it completely. I gave her an incredulous look. Wow, she really was a lot less principled than I had imagined.

"But it would be beastly of me to leave poor little Shizune out there to deal with the bad guys on her own," Jiraiya continued, smirking now, "so how about we do this. _You _stay here with someone from our group to watch you, and then we'll go break the ambush and see to the problem of these hitmen. And _then _you'll give coming back with us a bit more consideration."

"Bah," Tsunade spat, kicking back in her chair, "you're an unpleasant bastard as usual. Fine, do what you want. I'll stay here. Just go and get my damn assistant already."

"Excellent." He beamed. "Suzu, let's go get Kushina."

When we went to the next room over, Kushina was sitting at the desk and handing a scroll to Gamamitsu, a smile on her face. Saluting, the toad swallowed it before leaping off the desk and between my feet, jumping out the door and down the hall.

"Oh, you're back already?" she asked, surprised to see us.

"We've got a situation on our hands," Jiraiya shrugged in reply. "Shizune's been kidnapped."

"_What_?" Kushina jumped to her feet.

"I'll explain on the way there," the Sannin said. The he put his hands together, and in a puff a smoke, a shadow clone appeared beside him. It immediately henged, turning into…

Me. It was a flawless imitation; its hair, eyes, face and clothes matched mine perfectly. When I jumped back, it even grinned my exact same grin, right down the way the corners of my eyes crinkled.

"Don't do anything perverted while you're wearing my face," I immediately warned it. Then I paused. "Have you _really _been staring at me that much, if you can make a perfect clone like this?"

"Brat." Jiraiya brought his fist down on my head, though he didn't put any real force behind it. "Anyway, Tsunade is sure to try and knock you out and escape while you're watching her, so I've made sure this one can take a hit without dispersing. It'll go next door while you watch the roads. After she thinks you're down, she'll probably try escaping toward the outskirts of the city; your job is to make sure she doesn't get too far. Your wire techniques will probably come in handy for that, if you can get a hand on her."

"Eh?" I asked, eyes going wide. "I… are you sure that's a good idea? I'm not that great a fighter…"

"Your combat ability _is_ pretty average for a chuunin," Jiraiya agreed rather insultingly, and I bristled. "_But_, before you get all angry, I'll tell you this: you run like a jounin, kid. You'll catch her when she goes. Don't worry."

Appeased, I crossed my arms and snapped my jaw shut. "Fine," I muttered, "I'll do it. Be careful, okay?" I added, looking over to Kushina.

"Always," she replied warmly, giving me a smile. Jiraiya promptly gave me an expectant look; I just raised an eyebrow at him.

"You should probably get going now, Pervy Sage," his clone said, crossing its arms in a way that was so unsettlingly _me_. "You'll have to leave now if you want to drag your fat behind over there before tomorrow morning."

For a moment, there was a beat of astonished silence. Then Kushina and I promptly burst out laughing; Jiraiya turned to look at it in disbelief.

"Hey, I'm just staying in character," the clone shrugged. "It's your own fault you're a masochist, anyway."

"I don't believe this," Jiraiya muttered, slapping a hand over his face.

* * *

No more than fifteen minutes after that lighthearted exchange, I was fighting for my life. My life _and _Tsunade's, in fact. How had things managed to escalate so much in a half of a half of an hour? The explanation is both simple and not.

Kagemori Aiba.

As Jiraiya had predicted, Tsunade did indeed knock out the clone and try to skip town. She noticed that I was on her tail halfway out, though, and an epic chase ensued. Things would have been sticky had I not been a chakra sensor; I would have lost her the moment she broke my line of sight. But luckily for me, I _was _a sensor, and though I had to maintain a five-minute sprint at my top chakra-enhanced speed to catch her, at the end of the stretch I finally managed to barrel right into her, stopping her in her tracks.

"Ugh… you really don't give up, do you?" Tsunade groaned when we rolled to a stop. I ended up half-flopped over her stomach, but I was so busy gasping and sucking in air as fast my lungs allowed that I could hardly speak, let alone move. Sure, I maybe I did run like a jounin… but so did she. In fact, she _was _a jounin. A jounin and _beyond_.

"Why are you doing this?" I panted once I'd regained enough of my breath to do so, crawling off of her. Tsunade grimaced and sat up, batting some dirt off her sleeve. "Surely coming back to perform a single surgery isn't _that _bad. And it's not like we're conscripting you or anything. We _did _say we were going to pay you."

"You wouldn't understand, kid," she told me, standing up and straightening her clothes out. "Besides, it would take a hefty sum of money to make me set foot back in _that _place again."

She turned and made to leave, but I launched forward and grabbed her leg. She immediately tried to kick me off, but I clung onto her like a iron-clawed koala. The resulting spectacle must have looked quite humorous, what with a grown woman trying to shake a thirteen-year-old off her leg.

"I'm not letting go," I said stubbornly, locking my arms. "No one else can help Rin but you."

"Listen, brat, sometimes people are just meant to die," Tsunade growled, finally grabbing me by the collar and yanking me off. "Even if I save that Rin girl's life, do you know how much she's going to suffer when you undo that seal? You don't just take a one-hit kill assassination technique to the chest and walk away without consequences. She'll have to endure countless painful physical therapy sessions and she'll probably need assisted respiration for weeks until her lungs have fully healed. That means pipes and tubes stuck into her all over, eating through a plastic straw, and being confined to a single hospital room for months on end. Let go of her before you do something unsightly."

I would have responded to that, but then I saw the person sneaking up behind her. Tsunade, seeing my eyes widen, whirled around just in time to get splashed with a face-full of blood.

Given for the fact that had just been giving me an incredibly jaded and cynical speech, the scream she let out right then sounded like it came from a different person. But it was a terrifying one—and a _terrified_ one. I darted forward, throwing myself in front of her.

"Misuzu-san," Kagemori murmured, looking down at me as he lowered his arm. His right hand light up with a green glow, and he held it over the cut on his wrist until it had healed completely. No longer dressed like a civilian, he was wearing a dark blue shirt and black pants, its ends held down by bandage wrappings. His zouri had been traded for the iconic ninja sandals, and there was a Konoha hitae-ate tied around his head. A long slash had been carved through the leaf's center.

_Missing-nin._

Kagemori was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "Will you move aside, Misuzu-san? I have no quarrel with you. I am sorry about your friend Rin, but my business with Lady Tsunade must be attended to."

So he knew about Rin? I slowly sank into one of Hurricane Gale's defensive forms, pushing a foot out behind me while positioning one arm in front of me. He had been eavesdropping, then. Or maybe he'd heard us talking on the road. He had been gathering intel this whole time, hadn't he?

Damn. We've been sloppy.

"Will you move aside?" he repeated, gaze darkening. Behind me, Tsunade was whimpering, shaking and staring blankly down at her hands. The sun was still high in the sky, and I could hear birds chirping somewhere off to my left. A sweep with chakra sense told me that no one else was around—he'd come alone.

"I will not," I said.

There was a moment of absolute stillness. Then we sprang into motion, and everything blurred as we launched straight into a taijutsu bout. I kicked, aiming a foot for his ribs; when he deflected, I spun to keep my momentum while bending my other knee, dropping down and trying to uproot his stance with a sweeping kick. He avoided me by jumping up into air, and in the two-second gap where I had to recover my balance, he threw a fist toward my face.

Because I lacked upper body strength, I disliked using blocks. Unfortunately for me, though, I had neither the time nor the positioning to dodge, so I was forced to raise my arms while still half-crouched on the ground. I was immediately pushed onto my back by the force of his strike, so I quickly brought my knee up to prevent him from locking me on the ground. Very much wanting to avoid a hit to the groin, Kagemori threw out his off hand and cartwheeled over me. Straightaway, I put my palms on the grass and kicked myself upwards with my other leg, flipping over my head in an attempt to clip him with my heel. Unfortunately, he evaded me, and I let myself fall backward to right myself before he could strike again.

Just as I had situated myself back into a proper stance, my opponent launched a vicious series of punches at me. As expected of a male teen who was older and taller than me, his strength was significant; I was instantly on the defensive, ducking and dodging and taking several steps backwards.

Recognizing that I was being herded, I swept his fist over my head and disengaged, stepping around his back to buy time. As he swiveled around, we pivoted in a half-circle back to back, and I took the few precious seconds to mold my chakra. Sensing that I was shifting to ninjutsu, he immediately drew away and spat a volley of thin needles at me. I began rushing through hand seals.

"_Fuuton: Kami Oroshi!_" I shouted, thrusting my hands out kamehameha style and letting a blast of wind scatter them. Such needles were almost always poisoned, and I did not want to risk even getting grazed by them. Better to block these than dodge.

Using the cover his projectiles had given him, Kagemori drew two kunai in a reverse-grip and dashed forward, veering left to avoid the blast of wind. Tsk, he knew I wanted to avoid short-range combat, so he was intent on sticking as close to me as possible. I had to make him keep his distance somehow.

Just before he reached me, I clapped my hands together and let wire explode outwards into his face. The instant each strand lit up with chakra, he aborted his charge and circled back, trying to to find an opening at my rear. I circled with him, throwing my arms out at my sides and letting the wires spread out around me.

"They do call you Bloody Threads, don't they?" Kagemori asked, smiling grimly. I narrowed my eyes at him. What was his game, opening dialogue like this? Did he want to stall, or was he trying to distract me? Surreptitiously, I laid a touch seal in the grass with my foot.

"They do," I replied, taking up an offensive stance this time, gauging his face to see if he had noticed. It seemed he hadn't. "Do you want to see why?"

Kagemori tried a few tentative approaches, but soon learned that the deeper he pushed my defenses, the deeper the cuts the wires gave him. Though they had next to no mass, they were painstakingly sharp, so they needed very little force to slice through flesh. He disengaged again, knowing that any further attempts at taijutsu would grate him like cheese.

And then, without warning, he launched his needles at me again. Completely by reaction, I snapped off a Great Breakthrough; then, as my wires were swept up with the wind and drawn completely to my front, I realized my mistake.

Popping away in a substitution, Kagemori's chakra signature jumped from across the clearing to _right at my back_. Whirling around, I realized that he had switched with a fallen bough at the edge of the treeline and shunshin-ed forward to reach me.

"Shit!" I swore, flipping a kunai out of my sleeve and swiping my arm back, hoping I would catch him in time. I didn't; there was a little prick at the back of my neck, like an insect's bite, and then suddenly the feeling of cold metal sinking into my skin. Eyes going wide, I launched myself away at once, regardless of the fact that I was bringing the fight back toward the still-incapacitated Tsunade. As I went, I saw what was in Kagemori's hand.

It was not a senbon, as I had feared, but a _syringe_.

"What is it?" I instantly demanded, stomach sinking in dread. My hand flew to the back of my neck, and I wondered if I ought to cut over the site and try to bleed it out. But—no, it had entered though an injection, not a graze, and I did not want to risk opening a wound on my own neck now that there was an unknown chemical agent in my system. There were plenty of fast-acting poisons that targeted motor control, and one slip would mean slitting my own throat. Besides, Tsunade was right behind me. More blood would definitely not help _her _condition.

"Poison," Kagemori replied, shrugging nonchalantly. "What else?"

"Bastard," I snarled, even as a strange haziness began settling over me. Soon it felt like the ground was lurching from side to side, and I found myself stumbling.

Oh, Lord. If it was the same kind of poison most ninja put on their blades, then I was done for. That stuff was often lethal enough just by being smeared on the surface of a weapon; I had just taken a whole _syringe_ worth of something.

"Don't panic too much," he said, relaxing a bit now that I was swaying back and forth and trying to keep my balance. "The disorientation is more a side effect—the real killing mechanism of that specific poison is the anticoagulant. If you're careful not to cut or bruise yourself, you won't bleed to death."

Carrying a syringe of an anticoagulant while going after a hemophobiac… just then, I got a pretty good idea of what his intentions for Tsunade were.

"I've been obsessed with poisons since I was a child, you know," he told me softly, slowly walking forward now. "Back in the Second War, because Tsunade-sama was around, they thought it would be safe to send my father's regiment to Suna. If they used their poisons, the Slug Princess could just devise an antidote."

Slowly, Tsunade looked up. She was still shaking violently, but distantly, I think, she was registering his words.

"But Tsunade-sama didn't deploy with them, like she had been intended to," Kagemori continued. "She stayed behind in the village… because her lover had been killed. While she had been at home weeping over the loss of a man she hadn't even married, the entirety of my father's team choked on Suna's poison and then died throwing up blood. Of course, I had just been born at the time, so I wouldn't have known. My sister did, though."

Here it was… the evil villain monologue. As I braced myself on my knees and fought to steady my center of gravity, he came to a stop in front of me.

"But she's dead now, too. She became a medic-nin and she had been determined to be the best, so she could stop deaths like Dad's from happening again. But when she had been studying for the Tier 1 qualifications, she had come across the records Tsunade-sama had set during testing," he told me. "It would have been enough just for her to pass… but she wanted to break those records no matter what. So she studied and practiced and studied more. And then, on the day of the test… she couldn't break a single one."

He smiled bitterly. "I found her hanging from her bedroom ceiling the next morning."

Ah… it made sense. Tsunade seemed to be the common factor in these deaths, even if there was no logical way of holding her responsible. But grief, I knew, did not yield to logic, and scapegoating was a common coping mechanism.

"So you… became a missing-nin," I panted, squeezing my eyes shut as a wave of dizziness crashed over to me. "...lied to us, said you weren't a ninja… but you were waiting for an opportunity… this whole time."

"I thought I might get my chance when the hitmen came the first time, but Lady Tsunade is far too good a fighter to be taken down by the likes of them," he admitted. "I'm only a chuunin, anyway. There's no way I could take a Sannin in a fight. So I followed along after her under the pretense of wanting to become her student, just until I could find a weakness to exploit. And when she fought with Kushina-san, I found it."

And so he had. The hemophobia had made an appearance towards the end of that fight. And if he had been eavesdropping at our doors like I suspected he had, he had probably heard Jiraiya mention it when he had been explaining her past, too.

"And Shizune's kidnapping was the perfect opportunity." I smiled mirthlessly. "You weren't off mailing your aunt at all, were you? You were talking to someone... some_ones_ else."

"You're right," Kagemori confirmed. "I was."

For a moment, we stayed like that, staring at each other and digesting the situation. Then he drew his kunai again and made to push me aside. Rallying, I steadied myself as best as I could and refused to move, lifting my own knife as I put a hand on his arm and shoved him back. It was a weak shove, but he paused all the same.

"You're still going to fight me?" he asked incredulously. "If you keep this up, you're going to _die, _Misuzu-san. _Move_."

"I will not," I echoed myself, breathing heavily but still managing a wry quirk of the lips. "I won't just stand here… and watch you murder one of Konoha's Sannin. Maybe sometimes… people are meant to die. But she's not." My gaze hardened. "Not... not here. Not today. Perhaps I am… but not her."

A flash of anger darted across Kagemori's face, and then suddenly he was drawing his fist back and punching me across the face. The metal loop holding his gauntlet to his middle finger opened up a nice, sizeable gash on my forehead, and then suddenly blood was spilling into my eyes.

Oh, boy. Now it's starting.

As I went down, I activated the seal I had placed on his arm and yanked him down with me, pulling on the wire between us. Then we were wrestling on the grass, rolling away from Tsunade and trying to slash at each other with our kunai. He cut himself free of the steel threads soon enough, though, and made to stab at my neck; I just barely managed to jerk my head away, though ended up he slicing through my ponytail holder and taking a sizable lock of my hair off in the process. Well, that was what I got for having a side-ponytail instead of a regular one.

We struggled a bit longer, but under the influence of drugs as I was, it wasn't long before he got me. Finally, he managed to plunge his kunai in the soft spot just below my ribcage. I let out a strangled yell, muscles automatically seizing up in pain.

"I really didn't want to kill you," Kagemori panted, rolling off of me. "I really didn't, Misuzu-san."

As he looked down at me, I found myself believing it. There was true regret in his eyes, even if it was tempered with implacable resolve. He hadn't wanted to kill me… but he had done to get his revenge. Vaguely, I wondered if, had things turned out differently, this person could have been my comrade, or my ally, or my friend.

But that was neither here nor there; what was _now _was the fact that he was about to end my life.

"I have no interest in making you suffer," he murmured, looking away. "...For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

As he drew himself upright and raised his arm, I realized three things: one, that he was about to deliver a coup de grace and finish me off for good. Two, that I still had a bit of chakra molded. And three, he was on top of the touch seal I had planted earlier.

With the last bits of my remaining strength, I activated the seal and pulled the steel threads back as taut as I was able. The wires wrapped around his legs; I watched with grim triumph as they sliced right through his ankles. Kagemori suddenly found himself writhing on the ground next to me, feet literally taken out from under him.

I wondered if that would keep him from killing me. He certainly wouldn't be walking any time soon, but we were still within arm's reach of each other. Of course, at this point it didn't make a difference; I had already been dealt a fatal blow. It was over.

I struggled to stay awake so I could see myself to the end of life in consciousness, but it was a futile effort.

* * *

I felt a weight on my chest, and I vaguely had the thought that someone was listening for my heartbeat. After a moment, evidently, they found it; a rough, calloused hand began persistently slapping me on the cheek.

"Hey. Hey, wake up, kiddo. Open your eyes for me. Come on."

"Nghh…" I groaned, blearily prying my eyelids back for the sake of that voice. Someone had wiped the blood away, it seemed, because the image of Jiraiya's face appeared in my swimming line of sight relatively unmarred.

"Good," he said, seeing my eyes crack open. "Don't worry, we've got you," he assured me, grinning a tight grin that looked a little bit like a lie. "Kushina's taking care of that Aiba kid. I knew I should have done something about him…"

(Later on, Jiraiya would tell me that he had had a sneaking a suspicion he knew the name Aiba. And as it turned out, he did: his spy network had sent him an update on missing-nin in the area when we'd first started the mission. He'd glanced over it two months ago.)

"Mmm," I muttered, trying to make a noise of affirmation to show that I was awake. But then again, I wasn't really awake. Or at least, I didn't feel like it.

The world was starting to look awfully gray…

"Kid, don't make me kiss you," Jiraiya warned, thumping me on the chest. Belatedly, realized that I had stopped breathing for a second there, and I forced myself to take a big gulp of air. "_There_ we go. You keep doing that, okay? I know you're not feeling too hot right now, but don't stop, no matter what, got it?"

"Yuh," I agreed, incoherently.

As he set to trying to staunch my blood flow, Jiraiya quickly explained to me that the rescue had gone off fine, though Shizune had taken a hard blow to the head and was currently out for the count. Kushina was beating the shit out of Kagemori even though I had already chopped off his feet, and Tsunade… well, she was about as well as could be expected.

"Damn it, why won't this stop?" he cursed to himself under his breath; no matter what he did, it seemed, my wound just kept leaking. Even though he had been pressing his wadded-up haori over my side near two minutes now, the bleeding hadn't stemmed at all. Normally, I think the pressure he was putting down on the injury would have hurt like a bitch, but I was far too distracted by the sensation that my head was no longer attached to my body. For a second, I had the urge to say anticoa-something at him, but the thought drifted away before I could grasp it.

"Don't sleep," Jiraiya ordered sharply, grasping the skin of my cheek between his fingers and pulling on it, _hard_. The sting of it brought me back from the daze I had been drifting off into. "I'm warning you, if you sleep now, you _will_ die."

Well, it was good of him to warn me, and I did manage to keep my eyes open for another minute or so, but after that it was just too hard. I tried, really, I did, but the human body has limits, and I had just about hit mine. It wasn't long before Jiraiya seemed to realize that I had reached the end of my rope; the look that formed on his face was none too good.

A grave silence settled between us. Things had gone off-color again, and there was black creeping around the edges of my vision. With distant alarm, I wondered if I ought to offer my last words now.

"Don't come over here, Tsunade," Jiraiya suddenly said. He was looking over his shoulder now. "No, it's not a good idea. It's looking pretty grim. You don't want to—"

"Just move, Jiraiya." Suddenly a hand was shoving him aside, and with my grayscale vision, I saw Tsunade's face appear at my side. She blanched when she looked down at my bare stomach—my flak jacket had long since been tossed aside, and my shirt had a great gaping hole in it—but to my wonder, she didn't scream. She didn't freeze up, either. She trembled and shook like she was having her own personal earthquake, but she didn't look away.

She began making hand seals.

My curiosity brought on a brief moment of clarity. Suddenly my head was whirring with questions—was she going to heal me? Had Kagemori hurt her at all? Was she over her hemophobia all of a sudden? _How_? But perhaps most urgently—

"Why?" I rasped, weakly lifting my head to look at her.

"Don't try to talk," she muttered, refusing to meet my gaze. Instead, she stared determinedly down at her green-glowing hands. "...Save your strength."

Strength… as my head thumped back onto the ground and my thoughts descended into fog again, I suddenly found that I had very little of it left.

* * *

**A/N: Surprise! _Triple _update, this time with an extra-long chapter to boot! In fact, since I didn't want to cliffhanger you guys at that second to last scene break, I ended up writing the longest chapter of Glory to date. You can thank me by giving me all of your reviews, hm? :3**

**The inspiration was really flowing this weekend. Well, the fact that we're approaching a timeskip is also probably giving me a lot of excitement and motivation. I'd say that after finishing up Tsunade Retrieval, there's one more plot point to cover before we jump forward a few years. And then, after _that_, there's a little bit to cover we before hit the really _big _timeskip, which is where—in my opinion—the fun _really _begins. Akihiko is coming home soon, guys! Well, sort of. Ish. Okay, not really, but I'll be able to post the Sidestory chapters about him that I've been saving up. That has to count for something, right? And then when we're finished with the actual story, I'll be able to write the sequel.**

**(Yes, there is a sequel. It's already been outlined since it's so short—it's only a week long, actually! But no spoilers. /troll)**

**Oh, by the way, did I mention yet that I posted a Kakashi POV sidestory? I don't think I did. Well, now you know, so go check that out too.**

**Anyway, that's probably it for the Great Weekend Update Binge of 2015. Wow, I don't know where I got the energy from, but I just pounded out about 16,000+ words over the course of about two and a half days. I don't expect this will be very common once school starts again...**

**Anyway, enjoy!**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	30. Age 13: Tsunade Retrieval: Part 4

**Published: 8/2/2015**

**Edited: 8/9/2015 for continuity, 8/28/2015 to fix some instances of awkward syntax.**

* * *

"_What? There was someone there?"_

_"Yup..."_

_"_Who_? Why would..._ _Wait. Don't tell me it was—"_

"_Yes, it was."_

"_And I missed it completely?_"

"_Afraid you did. I can't talk, though. I didn't see him either."_

* * *

I don't know what people usually dream when they have near-death dreams, but the one I had after Kagemori Aiba nearly killed me had absolutely nothing to do with anything I had been doing at the time. I did not dream of blood, or knives, or poison, nor even Tsunade or Jiraiya or Kushina. I didn't run toward any lights at the end of any tunnels, I didn't meet any of my dead friends or acquaintances, and I didn't glimpse the afterlife. Instead, I sat in a room.

And, oddly enough, I got the sense I had had this dream before. One where there were a bunch of people standing and sitting around in a room with a table upon which small black books had been piled. I was somehow not surprised that I couldn't make out their faces, but the fact that I could inspect the room… that did seem like it was new.

It was a traditional Japanese room. The table was low to the ground, and the people on the floor were sitting on tatami mats. There were decorations on the walls—ink paintings on scrolls, fans propped up on display pegs—and the sliding paper doors to the veranda were wide open, letting white sunlight pour in over the room. The weather was very nice.

This room felt very familiar, in a way that made me think I had spent many years doing many things here. Which was odd, because even though it _seemed_ that way, I didn't recognize this place at all. Though the decor was traditional, it most certainly was not the House—for one, everything was far too expensive-looking—but the House was the only place in this world where I had cumulated the comfort of many years in.

And then I woke up.

Blinking up at an unfamiliar ceiling, for a long while, I laid still. Then I registered a dull throbbing pain radiating through my ribs, a pounding headache above my right eye, and a stiff, unpleasant ache throughout the rest of my body.

"Rnngh," I groaned aloud then, lifting my leaden arms to press my fingers to my temples, trying in vain to ease the tautness between them. As soon as I did so, though, Tsunade was suddenly in my face, pushing back one of my eyelids and flashing a penlight in my eye.

"Gah…" It was startling and unpleasant and it made my migraine throb even harder, but I kept still. The thing about living with a medic-nin was that you got used to randomly being attacked and inspected for injuries. Uncle Souhei had probably done the exact same thing to me dozens of times while checking me for concussions.

"Good," she said, drawing back and looking satisfied. "I didn't know if you had taken any blows to the head, so I was worried you might've been in a coma." Then she was shoving a glass of water and a plastic straw at me. "Here, hydrate yourself. Don't drink too quickly, though."

"I… okay." I accepted the water rather blankly. "I… what?"

"The cut on your forehead was superficial," Tsunade informed, sitting back on a cushion. There were various bottled drinks, food wrappers, and half-read scrolls strewn about around her, so it was evident she had been camping out here for an extended period of time. "The stab wound in your abdomen was much deeper, and your left kidney sustained moderate damage. Fortunately, your flak jacket absorbed a lot of the force, and as far as battle wounds go, it was hardly the worst thing I've seen. It wouldn't have been such a close call had it not been for the poison." She tucked a bit of hair behind her ear. "As for the poison, I managed to pull most of it out with an old extraction trick. You'll probably be shaking for the next couple of days, though. Don't be alarmed if your fine motor skills suffer; tremors are to be expected, and your knees might wobble every now and then."

Bemused, I just stared at her. She gave my drink a pointed look; I hastily took a sip.

"...Thank you," she said after a moment of silence, solemnly. "Not just for defending me, but for surviving. You've been out for a few days now. I didn't think you would make it for a while there."

That explained the bedside vigil, then. Quietly, I stared down at my water. I thought about the fight, and I remembered how I had screwed up, launching that fuuton technique without even thinking. It had only been a small opening, but what had resulted was just more damning evidence of how a single mistake would kill you. If I hadn't been poisoned, I _knew_ could have won that fight at mid-range.

"Thank _you_," I quietly replied, hanging my head in something that might have been shame. I was a chuunin, a journeyman ninja—I should have done better than that. Evidently those six months had shaved off more than just my physical skill. "My sloppiness would have gotten me killed if you hadn't saved me."

"Don't feel too bad about yourself, kid," a voice from the doorway suddenly said. Tsunade and I both looked up to see Jiraiya leaning against the frame. He pulled a book out of his belt pouch; it looked like it was a Bingo Book, but it seemed to be much thicker. "I looked up some more info on that Aiba kid. He was only a chuunin, but he had been field promoted, just like you, so he had exceptional field performance." He flipped open to a dog-eared page and scanned it. "A bukijutsu specialist with extensive mastery in poison, also capable of basic medical ninjutsu. Sixteen years old, B-rank."

"His specs are above yours," Tsunade informed me. "I took a look at your profile, since the oaf was file-diving," she explained, gesturing to one of the scrolls lying next to her foot. "You share the same rank and rating, but his mission count was over double yours. He also had three extra years of wartime experience on you."

"Oh," I said, not sure what else to say. Well, I guess that lessened the sting of defeat a bit… though the point still stood. I had just narrowly escaped death.

"Besides, he managed to trick two of the three Sannin," Jiraiya added wryly, sounding a touch self-deprecating at this. Tsunade's mouth twisted into a frown. "If you're sitting in defeat, we'll keep you company."

"...What happened to him?" I asked.

"Kushina beat him within an inch of his life," Jiraiya shrugged. "We wrapped up with legs so he wouldn't bleed to death, and then I sent him back to the village with the toad that went and picked up the files for me. T&amp;I will deal with him, as they do with all nuke-nin."

Then chances were I would probably never see him again. I sat and chewed on that for a while. The two adults in the room watched me wordlessly.

"...I think I want to go back to bed," I said after a moment, deciding that thinking could wait for after this terrible migraine ended. "I feel like shit."

Jiraiya barked out a laugh at that, and Tsunade's lips quirked. "That's probably a good idea," she said, taking the glass of water away from me. "You're a long way from recovered."

From the ubiquitous pain signals my nerves seemed to be sending my brain, I think I could agree to that.

* * *

"Don't be so broody," Kushina murmured, pulling a portion of my hair forward and trimming it, scissors snipping deftly. Since Kagemori had taken off a good chunk of it off during my fight, she was cutting the forward layers so they wouldn't be asymmetrical. "You look better with some face-framing, I'd say. And your bangs needed some attention anyway."

"You know that's not what's bothering me," I sighed, resisting the urge to huff and cross my arms. "And you're only saying that because you're cutting it the same way you do Minato's."

Kushina blushed. Ha, you thought I didn't notice.

"I don't know how to cut hair any other way," she confessed, smoothing down the side she was working on before switching to the other. "But it shouldn't be too noticeable, I think. Your hair isn't spiky, so it drapes differently."

After she finished, we swept the floor and threw the cut bits away. "Well," I observed when she handed me a mirror, "I think I look a little bit more like Tsunade-sama now, don't I?"

I parted my hair in the middle and tied it into loose pigtails. Kushina began chortling as I stuck a 100-ryo coin to my forehead, using chakra to keep it in place.

"Strength of a Hundred, huh?" Jiraiya snorted when he saw me, looking preoccupied as he shuffled through some papers. "That's great. Go show Tsunade-hime. I'm sure she'll find it endearing."

"You look busy," I said, leaning over his shoulder curiously. Without looking up from his papers, he shoved my face away.

"Sorry, brat, no can do," he told me. "You should know better than to try and look at a ninja's stuff like that anyway."

"Eh, even if I've got S-rank clearance?"

He rolled his eyes. "Even then," he said. He shuffled the papers some more before pulling out a scroll. "Here, go find Tsunade and get out of my hair."

Feeling rather cheeky, I began unrolling it right there in front of him. He didn't stop me, though—in fact, he just ignored me—so I figured it was safe.

"Whoa, what…" My eyes bugged when I saw the number written at the top. "That's a shit-ton of zeroes!" I was beginning to scan through the rest of it when Tsunade appeared from the hallway.

"Are you trying to make fun me?" she asked, a single eyebrow rising. As she came over and took the scroll from my hands, she flicked my forehead, and the 100-ryo coin fell off.

"Why the hell are we giving you so much money?" I demanded, wincing and rubbing my forehead. "I won't deny that you saved my life, and I'm not saying that I wouldn't pay any amount of money to keep being alive, but _this_ is…"

Tsunade snorted. "Please, I wouldn't accept payment for something like that," she dismissed, waving a hand as she looked the scroll over. She paused when she got to the bottom. "Besides, do you _really _think the village would put out this money out on your behalf?"

I pursed my lips.

"Oaf, it says here that my housing will be provided," she continued, without waiting for me to respond. "Where exactly does that Hokage of yours plan on putting me?"

"Beats me," Jiraiya muttered distractedly as he pulled out a pen and began marking things on the paper he was looking at. "Probably in the Senju compound. Or maybe next to the Sarutobis."

"Housing?" I think my eyes went as wide as saucers. "...Wait, does that mean—"

"Shizune might like that," Tsunade murmured speculatively, putting a hand on her chin. "She did love exploring the old compounds…"

"You're coming back to the village?" I blurted, darting forward. Tsunade looked down at me and smiled a smile that was half-warm, half-mischievous.

"I'm not going to say no to figures like these," she declared airily, waving the scroll at me. "What with all the trouble these damn debt collectors have been giving me lately, I figured this would be a good opportunity to square things off."

Heedlessly, I threw my arms out and seized her midsection in a hug. "Thank you," I said fiercely, fisting my hands in her jacket. "Thank you, Tsunade-sama."

Taken aback, for a moment, she only stared down at me. Then she chuckled a bit and laid a surprisingly gentle hand on my head.

"You're welcome," she told me.

* * *

When we returned to Konoha two days later, it was in triumph. We had sent word ahead that we had been successful, of course, and though the general populace didn't seem to know _why _we had been charged with bringing Tsunade home, they _did _know it was a tremendous occasion. On the day of our arrival, all the shinobi at the gate stood aside and cheered, applauding half for our success and half to welcome the Sannin Tsunade back after a long time away. Our trek to the Academy was similarly dogged with whistles and clapping.

We reported to the missions desk and were debriefed by smiling chuunin who instructed us to submit our mission reports by the end of the week. Then he greeted Tsunade very warmly, providing her with all the information about where she would be staying and how she was most welcome back in the Village Hidden in the Leaves. Jiraiya muttered sourly about favoritism—apparently, when he came back to the village, all the administrative shinobi ever went out of their way to do was inform any kunoichi they came across about the danger to the public baths—but seemed otherwise glad to be home.

"Ah, Lady Kushina," the chuunin added as we all stepped out into the hallway, "the Hokage is currently finishing up a meeting, but he should be here any—ah, there he is."

As he spoke, Minato popped into existence down the hall, dropping out of thin air with his coat spreading out behind him. He wasted no time in dashing forward, and before a second had passed he and Kushina were quite blissfully in each other's arms, sharing a very sweet—sickeningly so—kiss.

"I'm home!" Kushina happily exclaimed, beaming, once they had separated.

"Welcome back," Minato replied with an equally sunny smile. Before I could help myself, a little grin tugged at my lips. "And welcome back to you too, Jiraiya-sensei," he added. "And you, Suzu."

His enthusiasm seemed to stall a bit when he greeted me, and in return, my grin flattened. It was obvious he was happy, but that he also didn't want to get into a shouting match with me first thing. Well, I suppose I could respect that. I wasn't really raring for a fight right now, either.

Before I could respond, though, I was suddenly tackled from behind. Landing with an inelegant _oof_, I wondered just who had managed to sneak up behind me and get close enough to—

"Suzu!" Tsubasa sang in my ear. A grin immediately stretched across my face, and we both rolled over into sitting positions before throwing unabashed hugs at one another. Jiraiya whistled, grinning wildly.

"Wo—ow, kids, get a room!" he crowed. Tsubasa immediately laughed and jokingly wiggled his eyebrows at me.

"How'd you already know I was here? I haven't even been home yet!" I giggled, swatting at him.

"Hideaki saw you when he was on the way home from his mission," he replied, swatting back. "He overtook you right about when you were on the midsegment of the road from Otafuku Gai, apparently."

"Oh, really?" I asked, surprised.

"Yup! Makes sense you didn't see him. He _was _working, after all." Tsubasa looked like he was about to say something else, but then he suddenly remembered where he was and hopped onto his feet.

"Good afternoon, Hokage-sama, sir!" he greeted Minato, dropping into a brief but deep bow.

"Good afternoon," Minato greeted back, a little bit bemusedly. He probably hadn't seen Tsubasa anywhere before in his life.

"Anyway, let's go, Suzu!" Tsubasa immediately turned back to me, hopping from foot to foot anxiously. "Everyone's meeting up at since we're all back in the village now, and since I finally got permission for the treehouse, you can help us build! The boss told me to come get you."

"I've never had a treehouse before, though," I confessed. "I don't know how to help."

Tsubasa's eyes went wide. Aghast, he asked, "Not once? Not even when—" he paused rather significantly before going on, "—you were a kid?"

"Never," I shook my head. And really, I hadn't.

"That's _terrible_!" he was down the hall in the blink of an eye, looking resolute. "Come on! I'll tell you what to do, so hurry up! Hideaki said he would come back when he was done with his debriefing, so let's try and get all the simple stuff done now!"

"Okay!" I called back. Then, because even though we weren't all sunshine and daisies together right now I didn't want to leave Minato hanging, I said, "Mission complete, Hokage-sama. Thank you for welcoming us home."

"Suzu…" He looked a mix between happy that I'd responded and upset that he hadn't gotten his customary "niichan." And though I wasn't going to go out of my way to antagonize him anymore, I wasn't about to just let him have that back, either.

But still, I had said I would be civil, and he _was _going to be giving me missions anyway. After a moment, I came up with a solution.

"I'll see you later, oniisan." I waved over my shoulder as I jogged over to where Tsubasa was impatiently waiting. "Bye, Kushina-nee!" I added, sparing a warmer smile for my sister-in-law. "Jiraiya-sama, Tsunade-sama, Shizune-san!"

I would tell you all what sort of face he had put on in response, but as Tsubasa and I found a nearby window to jump out of, I decided that there wasn't really any need to look back.

* * *

After a quick pit stop by the House to show to my aunt that I was alive and well with all limbs attached, Tsubasa and I raced to the Tsukimori estate. As Tsunade predicted, I was still suffering from aftereffects of my fight with Kagemori, so I was not quite coordinated as usual… to somewhat unfortunate consequences. I did still win the race, of course—I just crashed into the gate wall due to brake failure when it was over, that was all.

"Holy shit," Tsubasa gasped, skidding to a stop as I groaned, holding a hand over my face as I picked myself up off the ground and got to my knees. Jesus Christ, had I broken my nose again? I'd not had such a spectacular collision since that one time I overran first base during softball and smashed into the heavy double-doors of my high school gymnasium.

"Wow, are you okay?" Tsubasa exclaimed, taking my arm and hauling me up to my feet. "What happened?"

"A nuke-nin poisoned me, that's what," I groused, hanging onto his shoulder for balance. "I'm fine. That probably wasn't the smartest idea… she _did _tell me to take it easy."

Just then, the wooden gates creaked open. "I thought I heard a ruckus," Uncle Souhei said with a raised eyebrow, looking down at me. "What was that I heard about a nuke-nin?"

In response, I immediately threw myself at him. He caught my hug with a laugh, and even went so far as to throw me over his shoulder and carry me inside, playfully poking at my sides to tickle me. I immediately began flailing my arms and legs in an attempt to escape.

When we arrived at our destination, it soon became apparent that work on the treehouse had already commenced. The floor and all of its supports were already mostly in place, with a crude wooden ladder leaned up against its edge. Tsubasa, though, ignored this altogether and just hopped up from the ground instead. Being a ninja, it seemed, allowed one to cheese through all the difficulties of building a treehouse.

Hideaki and Aoi appeared about twenty minutes later, scaring the living daylights out of all of us when they did. In full uniform, ominous black cloaks and painted white masks and all, they nearly gave Kyouya—who had been conversing with us from his office since the veranda doors to his study were open—a heart attack. Luckily, though, they had been wise enough to slip in by going over the part of the wall that was hidden by a thicket, so our host's neighbors wouldn't be gossiping out the wazoo.

Aoi, when he was de-cloaked and un-masked, looked infinitely more ANBU-like than Hideaki. He was dark-haired, narrowed-eyed, and stoic; he only gave me a taciturn "hello" when we exchanged introductions. The fact that he immediately set to having a glaring match with Tsubasa—who looked absolutely scandalized by his presence—didn't help the impression much, either. The animosity they began producing was quite impressive; they _really _didn't get along.

Nana appeared next, balancing three huge boxes of pastries in her arms. She was a baker, I had learned, and she was usually the one responsible for providing us with cakes and cookies and sweets. The floor of the treehouse, which now had half-finished railings, became the site of an impromptu picnic. All work ceased, and we all set to laughing and eating and shoving each other off of it. Well, most of us did. Kyouya and Nana kept a sizable distance from the ninja roughhousing.

And then, when Tsubasa barely managed to right himself in time to land on his feet, everything stopped. Not because of the close call, or because Aoi had been a bit too heavy-handed, or because Hideaki had stopped smiling and given his partner a decidedly _not_ joking punch in the side, but because in the process of tracking Tsubasa's fall, we had all turned and caught sight of who was walking towards us from across the lawn.

As he hobbled towards us, leaning heavily on Hayato Yamanaka's arm, I found that Daisuke Sarutobi looked gravely ill. He was pale, startlingly so, and even from here we could all see that he had a frightening shake going.

"Daisuke!" Uncle Souhei exclaimed, looking horrified, as he dropped out of the tree. Hayato-sensei and Daisuke came to a stop in front of him. "What happened? You look terrible!"

"Gee, thanks," Daisuke snorted sardonically. "Thank you, Hayato. I'm fine," he added, shifting his weight to his cane instead.

"Are you sure?" Hayato-sensei asked, looking unconvinced. Frankly, I wasn't either. He looked awful.

"It's just that new medicine the family physician is insisting I take," Daisuke grumbled, waving a trembling hand. "He's an idiot, astoundingly so. Why make a dying man suffer more?"

Absolute silence fell. The rest of us shinobi jumped down from the treehouse, and Kyouya and Nana scrambled down the ladder.

"...What?" Daisuke huffed when we continued to stare at him with wide eyes. "Did you think I was immortal or something? I'm nearly eighty years old, you know. Most people around here die at least fifty years earlier."

"That doesn't make a difference," Kyouya replied, shock making his voice soft. "Daisuke-san… what's—?"

"What do you think?" He rolled his eyes. "I mean, what were you _expecting _when I starting showing up here after over half a decade of staying home?"

"Daisuke, stop it," Uncle cut in, using his no-bullshit voice. I automatically flinched despite the fact that it wasn't even remotely directed at me; I couldn't help it. It was the voice he only used when we got in trouble, after all.

"Fine." Daisuke sobered. "If you must know, they think it's cancer. Lymphoma. I don't know what kind." He suddenly let out a cynical laugh. "After going through all the shit of moving to a universe like this one, in the end it's _cancer _that does me in. Can you believe it?"

"There's nothing they can do?" Nana asked, brow creasing heavily. "Lymphoma… my aunt had it when I was a kid, before, but she lived a good while after treatment."

"There is no treatment here," Daisuke snorted again. "We're in feudal Japan. Maybe the medic-nin could try removing it surgically, but I say no. I'm too old to deal with that nonsense. I'm not going to take any of this stupid medicine again, either, whatever the hell it is."

There was a marked fission of dissatisfaction in response to this. Uncle Souhei, Hideaki, and Aoi gave no visible reaction, but Kyouya and the rest were already opening their mouths to protest. As for me, I had no idea what to think.

It didn't matter, though, because Daisuke just held up a hand and said, "Enough. Kyouya, I'm going to discuss it with you and Souhei later. For now, I just have one piece of business I want to take care of."

He turned and looked at me.

"Yes, you, Miss Chuunin," he said when I glanced left and right. Oh, shit, that was right—he had been looking for me last meeting, hadn't he? Tsubasa had sent me a note.

"What is it?" I asked, not knowing what exactly he wanted with me. What _could_ he want?

"I'll just get to the point. You're the only person from Earth I've ever met who tried to make a difference." His eyes, I saw, were filled with an intense curiosity. I almost began sweating.

"I guess so..." I replied slowly, flicking my gaze at Uncle Souhei. He glanced back at me, looking faintly guilty at that statement, but it didn't seem like he knew where this was going, either.

"Why?" Daisuke asked me plainly. "Why take the risk? Souhei's told me what's gone wrong with you. You ended up in the psych ward and you've nearly gotten yourself killed more than once. What made you think it was worth it?"

"Worth it?" I echoed. A moment of silence passed, and I felt the weight of everyone's gazes on me. "...I never really thought about whether it was worth it," I finally said. "I just… didn't want them to die."

Of all the responses Daisuke had been expecting, it seemed that that hadn't been one of them. His eyebrows shot up.

"You would risk so much for fictional characters?" he asked, incredulous. "It's not like things wouldn't have worked out if they'd died. Maybe a couple of people would have been lost in the intervening time, but we all knew everything would have ended alright… before you started messing with things, anyway."

It was my turn for my eyebrows to shoot up. "Are you upset I messed with the canon?" I questioned, shifting to the front of the group.

"Why should I be? I won't live long enough to be concerned for the days when your changes start to mean something," he dismissed. He was cavalier enough that I almost believed him. Almost.

"You are concerned, though," I said, surprised. I could see it. It was in the way his eyes had immediately fixed into a dead stare—too direct, too smooth. "If you think of them as fictional characters, though, why would you be?"

Silence again. This time, though, it stretched—and stretched, and stretched. The surrounding Earthlings watched, wordless, and Daisuke and I stared at each other. A strange tension began building.

And then Daisuke heaved a heavy sigh.

"I suppose," he began reflectively, "I'm concerned that you're being sincere. I was ready for someone with a hero complex. Or someone who did it because it amused her."

"You would have preferred that?" I'm sure my disbelief was plain on my face.

"Maybe. In the sense that at least then you would have aligned with my expectations." He leaned a bit more heavily on his cane. "You don't, though. And now…" he was silent for a moment.

I kept staring.

"Nevermind, then," he dismissed, and turning towards the house. "Kyouya, Souhei, come with me. I've got a couple things to say to you two. It might take a while. Hayato, you come too," he added, as a bit of an afterthought.

Kyouya and Uncle Souhei and Hayato-sensei all exchanged glances. Then they detached themselves from the group and made to go towards the house as well, grim looks forming on their faces.

"Wait," I said.

Daisuke stopped. He turned to look at me over his shoulder.

"Why did you need to know?" I asked him, meeting his piercing gaze. And it was piercing me even now, taking me in and compiling information about me, forming an opinion that I didn't quite know what he would do with.

Why did Daisuke want to know why I'd changed the canon? What was he going to do now that he did? Was it something that involved me, or was it something that concerned himself?

Finally, he smirked. "Don't look so tense," he told me. "There's nothing I can do about anything now, anyway. You're free to do as you like. As for why…" his mirth faded as he turned away again. "Well, maybe I'll tell you some day."

* * *

After that, it was impossible for any of us to enjoy ourselves. We kept working on the treehouse, but it was a cheerless task, and after lifting wood for a while, my limbs started trembling rather uncontrollably. At that point, dusk was falling, and I decided I ought to just head back. I'd just have to leave without Uncle, since he was still inside talking.

"Let me walk you home." Hideaki stood when I voiced my intentions. Nana told me goodbye, Tsubasa waved glumly at me, and Aoi—actually, Aoi was sleeping on the grass with one arm over his face.

"I'll be fine on my own. You're not tired, are you?" He must have been on some mission, if it put an ANBU out like that in anywhere but his own home.

"I'm fine," Hideaki reassured me, sending an amused glance at Aoi. "Unlike that lightweight, I can stay on my feet for a whole day. I'll survive a walk to the Namikaze compound and back."

He insisted—I suspected he was worried about the precarious state of my shaky knees—so I gave in with a shrug and allowed him to escort me. He turned out to be completely unneeded, though, because the walk was utterly uneventful. Auntie looked a little spooked when I showed up at the door with a man in ANBU armor—even more so when I told her Uncle was probably going to be home late—but all in all, it was peaceful evening. Hideaki declined to eat dinner at the House and departed, melting into the dusky shadows almost as soon as he stepped off the porch.

By the way, with the perspective of some ten plus years, I can confirm that Hideaki had been lying when he'd said he hadn't been tired. If he hadn't been, he wouldn't have missed the shadowy figure who had spied on us the whole walk home.

I remember spending those days brooding over whatever secrets Daisuke was keeping, but I know now that I needn't have worried. The real threat was elsewhere, lurking in places unseen... but years would pass before we knew it.

* * *

**A/N: So, you guys, a total of **_**one **_**person—bless you, by the way, you're always leaving me reviews, chaosrin—has commented on Kakashi's side story. What happened? I was under the impression that a sizable amount of you were Kakasuzu shippers. I thought you'd all be super excited to see it. I guess not?**

**(Speaking of ships, by the way, we need a name for Suzu/Tsubasa. It's a toss up between Tsubazu and Suzubasa right now, although Suzutsu does make me giggle a little bit. What do you all think?)**

**Anyway, this is it for Tsunade Retrieval. Next chapter should start a new arc, and **_**lots**_ **of things will be different. We're gonna hit the ground running, so keep sharp! I have a lot of setting up and framing to do...**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	31. Age 16: Fire Country Court: Part 1

**Published: 8/31/2015**

**Edited: 9/2/2015 to fix some ages.**

* * *

"_What, are we skipping all those years of your life? What about Tsunade moving permanently back to the village? What about her joining the hospital staff and managing Rin's therapy? What about all the meetings you went to with the other Earthlings and all the doubts you had about Daisuke and how he never came back to Kyouya's house ever again?"_

"_Don't forget my promotion."_

"_And what about your promotion?!"_

"_Ah. Well, see, I was thinking I would just stick that stuff at the top of the chapter, where the memoir-y bits goes…"_

* * *

"I'm sorry, stranger. You need a visa."

As I stared at the gatekeeper, incredulously pushing my straw hat back, he stared back, giving me the look one gives to a delinquent trying to sneak into a movie theater. For a moment, there was silence, and the other shinobi on gate duty slowly turned to look at me.

"You don't know who I am?" I asked, dumbfounded. That… had never happened to me before. I'd never _not_ been recognized at the gate upon returning after a mission, _ever_. Not since the war had ended and Minato had become Hokage.

"I'm sorry, miss." He held up the mission scroll I had handed him—when you were returning from a mission, all you needed to do to pass through the gate was your scroll—and shook his head. "No documents are valid without a visa."

For a moment, I was completely stumped. It was just… they didn't _recognize_—?

"Oh!" I gasped, smacking myself. Quickly, I reached up and pulled the color contacts out of my eyes; then I gathered my loose hair over one shoulder and held it there. "How about now?"

The chuunin gave me a strange look. Then his eyes widened.

"Misuzu-sama?!" he gasped. "Oh my—I—I'm so sorry, Misuzu-sama, I didn't—your hair, it's brown, and you were wearing—"

"Aw, it's okay," I quickly dismissed, laughing. No wonder they didn't recognize me. I was still disguised. "If you didn't recognize me, it just means I'm doing my job well."

"I… yes, of course…" He quickly set to stamping the scroll and recording my entrance. "Welcome home, imouto-sama. Thank you for your hard work."

"You as well." I smiled at him before setting off back into the village. As soon as the familiar streets and houses surrounded me, I let out a little sigh of relief. After weeks of pretending to be a travelling peddler, it was good to be back. The tension I had been holding finally left my shoulders.

Instead of roof-hopping, I spent a blissful fifteen minutes walking to the Academy, relishing in the sounds and sights and smells of the Hidden Leaf. Tea Country had been a beautiful place full of great sights and people of fairly decent hospitality, but there really wasn't anywhere else like home. When I gave my report to the ninja behind the Missions Desk, I said as much, and he agreed. He then thanked me for my work as well, accepted the notes from my reconnaissance, and told me I was free to go home.

I thought of heading straight back to the House, but there were too many things I wanted to do out in the village now that I was home. There was an infinite number of people I wanted to see and about seventeen different places I wanted to go eat. I was still half in disguise, but hell, people dressed like this in Konoha too—I could easily spend all day like this.

It was decided, then. I swung by the hospital first and was pleased to find that Rin was on her lunch break.

"Suzu!" she exclaimed, clapping her hands together when I appeared in the doorway to the iryou-nin's lounge. She was sitting at a table, eating a sandwich out of a plastic bag. "Did you just get home? Wow, you look like you've really come a long way."

"Just got done at the Missions Desk, actually," I informed, happily bouncing forward and smacking a high-five into her palm. "You have no idea how happy I am to be back. This mission went on way longer than it should have."

"What was it again? Gathering intel on the new branch of that china merchant's rival company?" She put a hand under her chin. "You're right, it _did _run for a while. Corporate espionage missions don't usually last like that."

"I'll tell you all about it," I offered, holding a hand out to the door. "Want to go grab some lunch? I'm up for dango, or ramen, or barbecue, or—actually, I'm up for anything, really. I've been eating jerky and rabbits for weeks."

"I'm sorry." Rin put a hand on the back of her head and lowered her chin. "I can't even leave this wing of the hospital, let alone go out to eat. I'm on call right now."

"What?" I immediately whined. "Why? It's the middle of the day. You're good, but you're not the _only_ one… just let Tsunade-sama take care of it if someone else can't."

"Tsunade-sama is in the third hour of an incredibly complicated spinal surgery," Rin replied, looking apologetic. "I don't think she _or _her patient would appreciate an interruption."

"But you're _never _free whenever I try and go out with you," I complained. "Somebody always manages to start dying. When will we ever get to do anything together?"

"That's just what it means to be a medic-nin," she said regretfully. "And there isn't any other work that I love more. I'm sure we'll nail down a date eventually…"

"Nohara-senpai!" a teenager in a white vest suddenly appeared in the doorway, panting. "Masamaru in room 281! He's having a relapse again!"

"See?" Rin stood up, pushing her chair back. "You never know when someone will need your help. I'm sorry, Suzu…"

"You can't even stay to talk?" I asked forlornly, but she was already halfway out the door, shaking her head.

"Why don't you go visit Kakashi? He could probably use some cheering up," she suggested. "Things have been a bit rough. He'd be happy to see you."

I sobered. "They're still not letting…?"

She shook her head. "No. But Sensei has really been pushing lately. Something might be arranged if there's special supervision, though that's… well, Kakashi can tell you all of the details. Sorry, I really have to—"

"No, it's okay," I reassured her, holding back a sigh. "It'd be terrible if someone died because we couldn't stop talking. I wouldn't want that on my conscience anyway."

"I'll make it up to you," she vowed, holding up a hand. Then she was gone, vanished down the hallway and off to save some fellow's life. For a minute I stared after her disappointedly; then I heaved a sigh and left, scratching the back of my head.

She'd been working nonstop lately, but it was hard to blame her. After waking up and finding almost two years of her life had been stolen away, and then spending nearly another just getting herself to function normally again… who could? Even if her lack of free time disgruntled me, I would rather have her be working and happy than social and not. In fact, I was just glad that she had been able to jump back onto the medical scene with as little trouble as she had. She'd had to read a lot to get caught up with current information, but there had been plenty of time to do that when she'd still been in the hospital.

Well. I guess I would go find Kakashi, then. As I stepped back out into the warm afternoon sun, I wondered where he would be. He was obviously in the village, because Rin wouldn't have told me to go see him otherwise, but that left the _whole _village to search. Maybe I would check his apartment? Or go the training grounds.

Just as I began turning towards the southern residential sector, though, I heard the screech of a hawk calling for jounin response. I stopped, looked up, and was surprised to see the message in its flight pattern: summoned to the Hokage's office, one Hatake Kakashi.

I let out a little laugh. Well, that certainly made things easier.

* * *

Since he was already in a meeting with Minato when I arrived back at the Academy, I decided Kakashi had probably been expecting his summons. Well, then again, I had also stopped by the jounin's lounge on the way here—I'd changed my clothes, figuring that if I was going to chance an encounter with the village leader, I ought to do it in my uniform—so that might have had something to do with it too. I wasn't in a rush, though, so I was content to wait outside the door. There was a nearby window that was perfect for people-watching, since it looked over one of Konoha's busiest streets.

While I waited for the meeting to end, several people passed me by. Most of them seemed to be in a hurry and only spared a slight bow or a nod of the head and the occasional good afternoon. Every now and then, though, someone would stop and exclaim something to the effect of, "Oh, imouto-sama, I didn't know you were home!"

Imouto-sama… honorable little sister. When had people started calling me that? I couldn't remember. But a lot of them did now, and I wondered how many of them were actually apprised of the knowledge that Minato and I hadn't been born to the same parents. We had been _raised _by the same couple—or, well, in the case of Minato that would be half-raised, since he'd been a lot older than me when Auntie and Uncle began running the House—but, if I recalled correctly, my mother and his father had been second cousins.

I guess the outside world viewed us as perfectly close siblings.

I sighed contemplatively. Things between Minato and I… well, we got along. After Tsunade-sama had come back to the village, we had started doing things together again, and I still spent the occasional lunch break or two visiting him at work, but things had never really been the same. Beneath the geniality of everything, there was a sort of distance separating us. Sometimes, when I found myself laughing together with him over a meal, being happy and friendly, I almost felt like I was lying. Oh, I knew why we were this way—we both did—and there had been a time I would have been pleased with this state of affairs. This undefinable, nebulous sort of unease that kept our greetings and goodbyes only four-fifths sincere… I would have been happy to know we would not restore ourselves to our former closeness.

Now, though, I wondered if I ought to be having—not regrets, not per se. I couldn't regret removing myself from a bad relationship and starting a newer, more honest one in its stead. But I did wonder, every now and again, if I had the right to respond when people called me "imouto-sama."

"You've got a dark face on."

Blinking out of my thoughts, I looked up and saw Kakashi standing in front of me. He didn't have his series-counterpart's habitual droopy-eyed slouch, but there _was_ a small book in his hand. Not Icha Icha—though the first time I had caught him with it, I had thought for a second that it had been—but a more academic piece of literature. Last time I'd been home, he'd been working his way through a set of treatises on chakra manipulation and nature transformation… and it looked like he still wasn't done. Well, it seemed that even though he had taken to blatantly reading in front of people he was supposedly in conversation with—he was well on his way to developing _that _bad habit—he still wasn't quite at the point where he could shamelessly read smutty novels in public. I had no idea if he looked at that stuff in his private time, though.

(Gag, I just had an image of Kakashi Hatake reading Fifty Shades of Grey before bed…)

"And you don't," I noted, because even with his mask on, he looked suspiciously happy. His eye was curved and he was holding himself with more energy than he usually did. "What's up? Rin set me to looking for you specifically because you were in a supposedly bad mood."

"Well, that's because Obito—" Kakashi began, but paused when a secretary appeared at the end of the hall and began walking in our direction. "—actually, you might just have to ask Sensei. But I think he was planning on tell you soon anyway."

"Eh?" I straightened up, but he was already prancing down the hall—no, not literally—and tossing a nonchalant "bye" over his shoulder, complete with a little dismissive wave. Minato stepped up to the door and peered down the hall after him.

"I figured that would get his spirits up," he commented, putting a hand on the doorframe. "Welcome home, Suzu. I didn't know you were back."

"I just got back," I replied, leaning against the window. "About… an hour and a half ago? The gatekeepers didn't recognize me."

"Probably because you've gone brunette," Minato decided, eyeing my dyed hair. "The hallmark of a Namikaze is blinding blond hair, after all. Oh, but before you go put it back to normal, I would recommend you keep it as is."

"Oh?" I perked up. "That sounds a bit like…"

"A mission, yes," he finished, a little bit sheepishly. "I'm sorry for piling work on you. I thought you would've been home two weeks ago, so I promised you to the daimyo because I thought you would have had a bit of break time."

And then there it was—just now in his eye, despite the levity of his tone, that wary look. A faint face wondering if the falling out would start now. We were always doing this, watching each other, waiting for the moment where things degenerated again—

"The daimyo?" I raised an eyebrow. "That escalated quickly."

"I hate to do this to you right after you got back," he began, grimacing, "but I was thinking of briefing you now. It ties into the _thing _Kakashi tried to tell you about, too, so…"

I hummed, calculating. A mission with the daimyo, something to do with Obito… Kakashi in a good mood. The first two components sounded like the makings of a disaster, but the last bit was unexpected.

"Well," I said after a moment, "buy me food. Then I might forgive you."

Minato looked positively relieved.

* * *

And of course we ended up at Ramen Ichiraku. It was just after three, so it was empty when we got there; Minato, in a completely unsurprising move, planted a privacy seal on the counter as soon as we had placed our orders. I couldn't count how many times he'd done that; if walls had ears, Ichiraku's would need all sorts of silencing, they heard so many secrets from our Hokage's mouth.

We didn't start talking until Teuchi had brought us our bowls. He saw the black marks by Minato's elbow and dutifully turned away, busying himself with the cooking equipment.

"That matter that came to my attention right before you left," my cousin began abruptly. For a moment, I just stared at him, not quite putting two and two together. What had happened before I'd left? I thought I was going to get a report on Obito Uchiha—

—_Uchiha_. Oh, _that_. Before I'd left for Tea Country, one night when Minato had been staying late doing research on something in the Tower's basement, I'd gone into the records room and very deliberately half-pulled every scroll mentioning the Uchiha out of its slot, leaving them all protruding in their shelves. I had even gone so far as to leave Fugaku Uchiha's ninja registration file open on the room's lone table, and I had posed it head-to-head with Danzou's mission record, along with Koharu and and Homura's recorded council statements. Then I had smacked a pile of handwritten intel on the just-beginning Mist Rebellion right on top of them, conveniently leaving one sheet of paper askew so its edge underlined the _Rebellion _part of Mist Rebellion. Then I had waited until Minato had returned to the room, given him my best Very Significant Look, and promptly fled the scene.

To be honest, the Uchiha massacre had totally slipped my mind until then. It was only after Kushina had shown me pictures of her and Mikoto posing with their toddlers Naruto and _Sasuke_ at a park that it had crossed my mind. I had beaten myself stupid with the all headdesking I'd done afterwards; then I'd desperately prayed that it wasn't too late for Minato to do something about it. The Uchiha were already very well alienated; after the Kyuubi attack, their mostly-demolished compound had been rebuilt in one of Konoha's most remote residential sectors, well away from the other old clans. Only three years had passed since then, but that was plenty of time for dissention to accumulate. Fortunately, though, little Itachi—who was a year into his stint as a genin—was still only eight, so there was still time until it happened.

"What about it?" I asked softly, wondering if something had happened in the few weeks I'd been away. It wasn't possible that I had somehow fast-tracked it with my actions, was it? Oh, God.

"Koharu, Homura, and Danzou's vehement opposition to letting Obito back into village operations makes even more sense than it did before," Minato replied, equally softly. "And it had already made copious amounts of sense. But even with all the trouble those three give me, I had thought they were protesting a bit too strongly."

Those three… the Unholy Trinity of the Konoha Council, that was what I called them. Village politics were a terrible, agonizing grind for the incumbent Hokage, and it was all because of them. On the council, only Hiruzen was a consistent supporter of Minato's agenda; Danzou, who passionately disagreed with Minato's "too naive, too transparent" governing style, made a point of giving him as much trouble as he possibly could at every opportunity. Which—considering that ROOT was still an officially sanctioned ANBU division at the moment—was a significant amount of trouble. Coupled with the fact that Koharu and Homura almost always sided with the old warhawk, it was no wonder I had caught Minato ripping his hair out over him more than once.

When my cousin had first broached the topic of reinstating the weepingly repentant Obito—who really had actually shed tears of contrition after Rin had looked at him and said "Obito, why?"—into the Forces, the ensuing shitstorm had taken nearly seven months to calm down. Not that Minato had called it a "reinstatement"—the whole thing had been posed as a conscription. Despite the fact that turning enemies into assets was standard shinobi procedure, though, they had not had any of it. Some two plus years after the fact, Obito was still in prison and we still hadn't gotten anywhere.

I had been rather inclined to think things might have stayed that way, but it seemed there had been new developments in my absence. Rin had mentioned Minato had been pushing lately, Kakashi had dropped Obito's name after a cheerful emergence from the Hokage's office, Minato was bringing Obito up now… there was only one explanation.

"I decided Obito was going to be my first show to the Uchiha that I value them as shinobi of Konoha," Minato continued, plucking his most loathed ramen condiment—umezuke—out of his ramen and dropping it into mine, "so I twisted a few arms, just a bit. They've agreed that he can take a trial-run mission, but he has to have ANBU supervision at all times."

"You didn't let them pick the chaperones, did you?" I questioned with dread. The last thing Obito needed was a squad of ROOT ANBU looking to sabotage him.

"No. That was part of the arm-twisting," Minato replied, sparing me a bit of a smirk. "I let Danzou know a few days ago that I was thinking of liquidating ROOT. It was made to handle a lot of the espionage of the Second and Third Wars, but now that we've entered peacetime, I told him its operations were putting unnecessary strain on the village coffers. Which _is _true, from a certain point of view. But that old man never bothers himself with the small accounting matters of the village, so he has no estimation how little of the ANBU budget actually goes into his division."

Ah. So when Danzou checked the finances himself he would see the money spent for ANBU as a whole rather than just for his portion of it. Without that distinction, there was no way for him to refute the claim, and with no way to refute it, Minato would supposedly be justified. ANBU ate a quite a lot of resources, so any portion of its budget would seem significant.

Clever… so long as Shimura didn't decide to look into that further, anyway. But even if he did, it would take him a while. As far as short-term solutions went it was good.

"You should disband them anyway," I muttered, looking away and grabbing my glass of water. "Danzou does terrible things to those operatives."

Minato's gaze hardened. "I knew that was the case," he replied rather darkly. "And I _will _see to the fact that he is siphoning parts of the Hokage's forces for himself… though that is a matter for another time. Anyway, the ANBU who will be looking after Obito are two of _mine_. They're direct subordinates of the ANBU Commander."

And the ANBU Commander, who was reappointed—or kicked out and replaced—annually, _always _belonged to the Hokage. No one in the Council had any authority on him, so the position was always free of their influence. Of course, the Subcommanders were a different story, but I wasn't so apprised of those matters. ANBU affairs were separate from the General Forces'; it was a completely different animal that I was rather unfamiliar with.

"I see," I said, mind whirring with all of the intrigue. Leave it to shinobi to make politics even more complicated than they already were. "And what will they be supervising him on?"

"This is where your mission becomes relevant," Minato replied, "since he'll be acting as one of your two bodyguards."

Oh, was that it? Only a bodyguard? And he wasn't even going to be doing it on his own.

…

Wait, _what?_

"It's a perfect setup," Minato continued happily. "An Uchiha, even one that had betrayed the village, guarding the Hokage's little sister on her mission with the daimyo. Trust for him to not only protect a village figure, but to deal with a mission involving the country's ruler. Of course, we won't divulge the true nature of the Kyuubi incident to the people at large, but after everything's done, we can let it be spread that he spent a significant amount of time AWOL and was taken prisoner as a missing-nin. That way, when the leaders of the coup d'état see the leniency that was allowed to him, they won't be so pressured to continue for fear of retribution."

My eyebrows just about hit my hairline. That was a hell of a lot of maneuvering. Well, let it never be said that Minato lacked savvy, I guess…

"But what's the mission?" I asked. "Why do I need _bodyguards_?"

"Because _you_ are going to become a wealthy merchant's daughter," Minato blithely informed, "and you're going to infiltrate the court of Hi no Kuni's daimyo, at his request."

As his words sank in, I decided that maybe I shouldn't have agreed to this mission so lightly.

* * *

**A/N: Credit to Silver Queen: I borrowed her concept of a "Mist Rebellion" from DOS' early chapters, when Shikako was postulating about Zabuza's involvement in said rebellion. Of course, Zabuza is only about eighteen right now, so he's obviously not attempting any Mizukage-slaying at the moment. Probably soon, but not right now. Based on the fact that Haku, who is Naruto's age, is currently three, it'll be some years yet before the Demon of the Mist leaves Kiri.**

**EDIT EDIT EDIT: So Haku is actually like five or six right now! Not that that changes much in terms of my story, but thanks to the reader who pointed out. Also thank you to the people who noted Itachi's age. I completely forgot to add the three years. Time skipped, but I left Itachi behind x3**

**So I have a confession to make: I've been sitting on this chapter for several weeks now. I've been sitting on chapter 32 for about just as long, and chapter 33 as well. I've been tweaking and tweaking and tweaking them over and over and over, and frankly, I knew I had them up to scratch probably half a month ago. But I couldn't bring myself to post it because I am scared shitless about everyone's reactions. A whole lot of stuff happened during the timeskip and we're not even remotely through marking the changes, not even with that shameless cop-out in italics at the top of the page. I don't know what you guys will all think of Rin. I don't know what you'll make of Suzu and Minato's relationship now. I don't know what you'll think of how I'm going to handle the Uchiha massacre. It's driving me nuts. This is the first time a fanfic of mine has gotten this far and while I'm really excited I am also completely terrified about screwing it up. **

**So... yeah. Let me know what you all think. Ask me about plot threads you think are still hanging. Even I have a hard time keeping track of them all and I seriously think I need all of your guys' help to make sure everything gets covered.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	32. Age 16: Fire Country Court: Part 2

**Published: 10/11/2015**

* * *

"_I hate infiltrations. I don't know how you stand it…"_

"_Really? I thought you did a lot of those in ANBU, though."_

"_I__ did. I hated them all. From the very first one..."_

* * *

I was not quite sure what to think once I'd received the mission roster. Listed first on it was, of course, myself. After that, Obito, whom I'd been expecting. Kakashi was on there as well, but that was not surprising in the least; never minding the fact that he would throw a fit if Minato didn't let him come along for Obito's first mission back, he was my registered field partner and it would be remiss of him to not be with me for such a high-spec operation. It was not even the asterisked note that was blacked out for everything but the portion that read _Hayabusa-2839.123, monitor Asakaze_/_Yuunagi_—ANBU jargon if there ever was some—that was bothering me.

No, it was the name Rin Nohara, innocuously appended at the end of the list.

On one hand, Rin. Rin who hadn't stopped to talk with me for more than twenty minutes in the past year, Rin who wanted desperately to be back in the field again, Rin who I was dying reconnect with. On the other hand, Rin—Rin who'd had a hole punched through her chest, Rin who was still required to have check-ups with Tsunade every other week, Rin who hadn't left the village even once in all the intervening time. Rin who was Konoha's second _jinchuuriki_.

What was Minato playing at? What kind of move was this? An olive branch, maybe—a kind gesture to let me spend more time with my friend. This was an undercover mission, so if I did everything properly, no combat would be involved. After all, that was the reason why I'd specialized in the field of infiltration in the first place: to fight for Konoha without _fighting_. A nice, no-action mission like this would be perfect for helping Rin get her feet wet again.

It was possible. I would be the best person for it—Rin knew me, and it was acknowledged that I was pretty good at what I did. Minato wouldn't have let me become a tokubetsu jounin for Intel Ops otherwise.

But only a fool would assume that all missions could go smoothly. In fact, I'd had a couple of skirmishes on the mission I'd just returned from, and that had been something as trivial as spying on teacup-makers. So was that what this was, then? His way of warning me not to screw up, stringing Rin's safety over my head like an executioner's sword, daring me to get comfortable? Forgetting the hell it would raise among my immediate friends and family, the Konoha Council would have my head on a platter if something happened to the Sanbi on my watch. This mission was enough of a hot seat as it was; in addition to not wanting to screw up Obito's key back into the village's good graces, I knew very well that my ass would be under major fire from all directions if I managed to mess things up for Konoha in the daimyo's court.

This was, very clearly, a threat. I had to make this mission work or suffer the consequences. Minato couldn't _not _see that—he was too deliberate, too aware, and too good of a shinobi to not know what Rin's name on this roster meant for me.

The only question now was which of those options was his actual intent.

Slowly, I casted my gaze over to the kitchen, where my cousin was amicably talking with Auntie. He'd shown up ten minutes ago out of the blue to plop this scroll into my hands, and apparently he had business with the House matriarch he wanted to attend to. Frankly, I didn't believe it—it seemed to me he just wanted to see my reaction.

"Thanks for the update," I said as I made my way to the doorway, forcing an easygoing air. He was not fooled in the least, but he plastered on a returning smile.

"Let me know if you have any concerns," he replied, as was form.

Concerns. He knew goddamn well I had _concerns_. He was just following his script, but my expression flattened anyway, and before long we were locked in a silent staring contest, regarding each other with narrow-eyed gazes. Auntie looked on wordlessly.

"Concerned or not, I do what the village requires of me," I finally said, turning away toward the stairs. "A ninja who backs down in bad odds is not a ninja at all."

I barely heard his response as I climbed upwards. It was a quiet thing, muttered under his breath, in a voice that held neither praise nor censure: "And what a ninja you have become."

* * *

A captain of this kind of infiltration was not expected micromanage the ops. Too much went on—too much with the Equipments Office arranging all the props, too much with Intel and Espionage constructing covers, too much with both Foreign and Domestic Affairs twisting arms and stepping on toes. It would put even the best of kunoichi off her game, and since I was expected to devote the entirety of my attention to my role, I left everything else to the village.

My room became a massive sea of scrolls and books. My housemates were a bit taken aback; while some studying was not unusual before an undercover mission, I had never been swamped to this degree before. But I had also never played a lady of the upper class before, and there was so much more to it all than any of us had anticipated. Not only did I have to learn the intel on the daimyo, his household, and his court—and what other missions were going in it that I wanted to avoid screwing up—but also history, classical poetry, mercantile politics, trade laws… and all the other things a girl raised in a wealthy merchant household would have grown up hearing about. Granted, I would not be expected to be a master of any of these things, but I had to give off the appearance of having had the proper education. And while I would never call a ninja _uneducated_ by any means, there was just too much of a difference between martial and civilian schooling for me to jump in without extensive prep.

With that said, though, everything would be for naught if I couldn't act the part. After I'd spent about four days studying, I found that I could no longer absorb any more information no matter how hard I tried, which signalled that it was time to start working on other things—demeanor, etiquette, that sort of thing. And while I could have gone over to my friends in Intelligence for training, I always found myself having rather traumatic flashbacks of paper-pushing hell whenever I went to I&amp;E, so I found myself paying a visit to Kyouya instead.

Tsubasa was not home when I let myself through the gate doors of the Tsukimori estate, but that was probably for the better. If he had been there, I can guarantee one hundred percent that my visit would have been sidetracked, derailed, and then completely repurposed without question. He was a dear friend to me, truly, but he was terrible for work. I took a mission with him once and it had been a disaster. Even _he _had admitted it.

"Suzu-chan?" Kyouya looked immensely surprised when I pulled open the sliding veranda door to his study, leaving my sandals on the stone step below the walkway. "Oh, come in. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I kind of need your help," I sheepishly replied, stepping inside and sitting down on the tatami, settling in front of his little traditional-style desk. "I have to do an infiltration in the capital and I'm supposed to be a rich merchant's daughter. What do rich merchants' daughters _do_?"

Kyouya blinked several times before answering, looking rather perplexed. Then he let out a thoughtful noise and began eyeing me pensively.

"Okay, so first, straighten your back," he said, motioning at my shoulders. I immediately obeyed, pulling them back. "Okay, no, don't stick your chin out. Lower it—yes, there, keep it level like that. Make sure you fold your hands on your lap, too."

"Okay," I said determinedly, following his instructions. "What else?"

"Speak femininely," he replied. "In my experience, most upper-class people from the capital tend to find women who speak in the neutral form rustic at best and boorish at worst. End your sentences with _wa _often, and of course, your default should be formal speech."

I grimaced. Oh, boy. I could already tell this was going to be a barrel of laughs.

"What else? Your hair is quite long already, so there's no need to worry about that. Dining etiquette… I'm sorry, but you're going to have to find someone else to instruct you in that." Kyouya winced, shaking his head. "I vowed when I was eleven that I'd never take part in another dining etiquette lesson ever again."

"Your childhood must have been a fun one," I murmured grimly. If the Japanese had equivalents of the three-sets-of-utensils, drink-on-the-right, no-elbows-on-the-table nonsense, I was _not _going to enjoy this. "Oh, God. Do I have to know tea ceremony?"

Kyouya let out a little laugh. "It depends. I do. What kind of trade is your family involved in?"

"We don't know yet," I admitted. "But we were thinking pottery or something similar. The story is my father was originally an artisan, and that he still does a lot of work with his hands. That way we can say he's shown me a few things, to cover for my calluses." I held up my hands, which had endured all the standard abuse of a ninja's training. It would be obvious to another shinobi that these weren't an artisan's calluses, of course, but if any of the other ninjas on security or bodyguard duty noticed, they wouldn't talk. Both Konoha and the authority of the daimyo had seen to that.

"Then you're alright. Do you know any musical instruments? Unless you're proficient in another fine art, like ink painting or the like."

"My calligraphy is okay, but that's only from all the fuuinjutsu practice," I sighed. "But instruments? I don't think… no, I haven't done anything since I lived on Earth. Let's see... trumpet wouldn't help, but I did pick up some flute. I didn't have a lot of technical skill, but my ear was alright and I could play slow songs well enough."

Kyouya made a thoughtful noise. "I'm guessing you learned the western concert flute, then? The kind with keys rather than holes."

"Yeah… we're probably not going to find any of those around here."

"I do have one," he informed, arranging a few things on his tiny desk before standing up. "But you'd best not attract attention to yourself with a shiny, exotic toy like that, I think. Not if you're doing an infiltration, anyway."

"You have a western flute?" I asked, wide-eyed, as I stood up as well. Kyouya smiled and motioned for me to follow him.

He began leading me down hallways, deeper into the house than I'd ever been before. It looked just the same as the rest of it, and I silently began wondering why we never went to the western half of the house when we visited. Of course, all of my musings were blown away when Kyouya stopped and pulled open a door to a room with a sparkling grand piano at its center.

The sight of it was so arresting that I froze right there in the hallway. For a moment, I could only stare at it wordlessly; then tears were suddenly streaming down my face. Kyouya gave me a knowing look.

"Tsubasa cried when he first saw it, too," he told me quietly, laying a hand on its polished surface. "In fact, I think everyone in the group who's seen it has. Souhei did when they finished building it, and Hideaki and Aoi both got rather choked up as well."

"I never thought I'd see one again," I said softly, feeling my lip tremble. Oh, this was bad. I'd been hit with melancholic nostalgia attacks before, but _this _was something else. This wasn't vague, distant longing. _This_… this was full-blown _homesick_.

"Maybe I should have warned you," Kyouya murmured even as he sat down on the bench, pulling his hakama aside so they wouldn't catch on its corners. "Sometimes I don't know if I regret having gone to the trouble of drawing it up and explaining it to a craftsman. I mean, it's not a Steinway, but…"

He put his foot down on the pedal as his fingers ghosted down the keys, leaving a ringing cascade of notes in the air. They had a strange twang to them, something indefinably foreign, but there was no mistaking that it was a piano. A _grand_ piano.

"Anyway, the flute's back there." Kyouya stood and shook his head, moving to get away from it. "If you want to see it—"

"Play something," I blurted, fisting a hand in the fabric over my chest. My heart was pounding. "Can you? Would you?"

For a moment, Kyouya was silent, and I thought he would say no. But then he sat back down, put his hands on the keyboard, and played.

I recognized it immediately. It was classical. I think it was Chopin, sad and romantic and lovely. But as he went on playing it, even when he had entered the final measures and even when it had ended, I found that I couldn't for the life of me remember its name.

"What is it called?" I demanded, feeling a sort of strange, frantic urgency. I knew this. I _knew_ this, I just needed to remember.

"I don't know," he said, plainly. His bluntness brought my sudden desperate spiral to a halt. "Nobody in the group can name it. Tsubasa never listened to that type of music, so he doesn't know. Aoi didn't recognize it and Hideaki refused to listen. The same with Souhei. And as for Daisuke and Nana... well, we never told them about this, so they haven't heard it."

"You... don't know?" I repeated, softly.

"I don't." He shook his head. "I've forgotten, just like you have. It _has_ been fifty years," he added gently.

I found myself sagging against the doorframe, feeling suddenly exhausted. Kyouya looked like he was, too, as he wearily got up and shut the lid over the keyboard.

"I'm sorry," I uttered after a moment had passed and I'd collected myself. "I... I shouldn't have asked you to do that."

"Don't be," Kyouya replied, sighing. "Never be sorry for your past. You can't seal parts of yourself away, so look back as much as you need to." He exhaled. "Then you can move on without regrets when the time comes."

We lingered only a little bit longer. Then we left, regardless of any flutes, and left behind that single, haunting remnant of a world we would never return to.

* * *

It was back to studying hard for the next two days. I looked up some more classical poets and I familiarized myself with any and all things pertaining to pottery. I got into practice with changing my speech, too, though I had to endure endless teasing and giggles from my cousins about it.

To be honest, despite all of the reading I'd done in the past week, I wasn't much of a bookworm. It was for work, though—the type of work I honestly loved—so I buckled down and did my best. Of course, I still did my daily routine to keep in shape—running, meditation, kata—but other than that I sat in my room, shoved my face into scrolls, and stayed that way from breakfast til dinner, stuffing my head with knowledge. Auntie Reiko was so impressed with my ability to read and eat and drink all at the same time without making a mess that she actually didn't scold me for, you know, reading at the table.

"Souhei was exactly like that when we were kids," she later told me with a silly grin. "You made me feel so nostalgic."

Unfortunately, I had once again exhausted all of my concentration by day three. Lucky for me, though, day three was also briefing day—a full and proper briefing, not a tell-you-what sort of thing at a ramen stand. I took myself to the Jounin Standby Station and settled down by a window, knowing that I would be called in at any time.

I took the flute Kyouya gave me, too. Not the western one, but an old shinobue in a _really_ expensive-looking case that was inlaid with jade. Apparently, it had been his great grand uncle's, but he had just shrugged and said it was of no use to him since there were at least five others like it scattered around the house.

It was, I reflected, easy to forget how filthy stinking rich Kyouya was. Even if he lived in a giant-ass mansion, he really was just that unassuming.

It wasn't too difficult for me to make noise with it, but after the first few notes came out I decided that this probably wasn't in the same key as the flutes I had been used to. A half-hour of uncertain experimentation followed; I managed to toot out a stumbling rendition of Hot Cross Buns, though. My tone was not so great, but that was something only time could take care of.

At some point, a couple of jounin came over and began giving me tips. I was immensely grateful; though I probably could have figured out how to mimic some old songs if I listened to them, it helped to know the actual notes I was producing with each fingering. I was fortunate that Konoha's forces were varied enough that some knew how to play instruments.

When I got tired of listening to my terrible fifth-grader sound, I decided to take a break and handed it off to one of the others. _She _played much more beautifully, and before long others were wanting to try. What followed was an hour-long session of war-hardened, elite killers laughing and squabbling over a hollow piece of bamboo. Ah, _jinsei iroiro _indeed.

"Summons to the Hokage's office for the tokubetsu jounin Misuzu Namikaze!" a voice suddenly called over the noise. Ordinarily they would have put out a hawk for me, but I hadn't really made much of a secret of my location, so I wasn't surprised that a runner had shown up instead.

The crowd of five or six around me aww-ed in disappointment when I took the flute back. I gave them an apologetic look as I put it back in the case and tucked it under my arm before I hopped next door to the Academy's administrative wing. The usual smatterings of "imouto-sama" and "Misuzu-sama" followed after me as I made my way down the hall leading to Minato's office.

When I got inside, I was surprised. I had been expecting he would be there, of course, along with Kakashi, but it was distinctly startling to see Obito wearing a Konoha flak jacket and uniform, standing in front of Minato's desk. He turned his head slightly and gave me an awkward look.

Yeah, I wasn't quite sure how to interact with him, either. The scars raking the right side of his face made him look quite scary, if I was honest, and even though I had tagged along with Kakashi every now and then to see him in prison, the last time we had really spoken to each other was when we had been screaming at each other in Rin's hospital room. Considering the fact that that had ended with him nearly killing me, well...

"...'_Nichiwa_," he mumbled after a moment, looking away. This was also somewhat surprising; I _had_ spent some time wondering what sort of attitude he would take now that he wasn't stark-raving mad, but timid had never really crossed my mind. And I was getting a distinct vibe of timidity from him. Not that he was scared of me, I decided, but because he was worried about what I would do now that I was here.

"_Konnichiwa_," I replied, a little bit bemused. And then I remembered to wave at Kakashi, who looked a little bit _a_mused as he waved back.

"Glad you could make it, Suzu," Minato greeted. His fingers were knitted together, and he placed his chin on them, looking contemplative. "Looks like you've been busy. Did you requisition that from Miscellaneous Equipments?"

Ah, of course he'd notice this stupidly expensive box. Neverminding the fact that he was one of the world's greatest shinobi, he grew up at the House just like me, so he had a commoner's eye for shiny things. Not even magpies could beat out the lower middle class when it came to spotting expensive stuff.

"Nah, I—borrowed it from a friend," I quickly fudged. Minato might become a smidge too interested if he found out I had a friend who could flippantly give out presents like these…

He was about to reply when the door was thrown open and a slightly out-of-breath Rin appeared. Contritely, she began, "I'm so sorry I'm late. There was a woman in the ICU—"

"You're fine," Minato assured her. Rin straightened up with a somewhat tremulous smile.

That smile said it all: she was nervous for this mission chance. She knew she was a potential problem member on the squad but she wanted to make sure that she would be able to come anyway. I quickly schooled my own expression and considered a course of action.

If she knew I was having as many doubts as she was about her being on this mission, we would only end up building off of each other's anxiety. If I acted like I didn't care, she would know I was being overly aloof and deduce why. If I acted happy, but not happy enough, it would also set off her suspicion. I resisted the urge to purse my lips. What to do?

Well, when in doubt, act oblivious, the saying went. What would I do in this situation if I hadn't known she was coming?

Take a leaf out of Kushina's book. I squealed and jumped forward, grabbing Rin's hands. "Are you coming on this mission too? Are you really? Yes! Yes, yes, _yes!_"

Rin giggled, freeing one of her hands and waving at me to calm down. Good. Spazzing like this was in-character enough of me not to raise suspicion, then.

"Why do you only ever jump and squeal for Rin?" Kakashi inquired, looking insulted. But when we met gazes, I could tell what he was only trying to banter; guess he didn't want Rin to be troubled, either.

"Because I love Rin more than I love you, obviously." I stuck my tongue out, grateful for his help, as I twisted around and linked arms with her. She managed to shut the door before I dragged her over to the center of the room.

"Is your eye bothering you at all?" Rin inquired of Obito, which immediately made me do a double-take. And as it turned out, Obito _did_ in fact have two eyes, though one of them was a slightly lighter shade of brown.

That… was slightly shocking. Not because the village had managed to find an eye to give him, of course—we _were_ ninjas—but because they had actually seen fit to give him one. That _had_ to have been Minato's work… though now I was betting anything that they would take it right back if they decided Obito didn't deserve it.

"It's fine," Obito murmured, a little shortly. He darted a look at our linked arms, lips pursing a bit. I found myself raising an eyebrow at him before I could help it.

Sensing tension, Minato quickly cleared his throat. "Anyway, we should get started. Are you all ready?"

I pursed my lips, but I didn't dwell. When we all got into a line and stood at attention, I did the same, Minato smiled a bit at the sight before sobering.

"Alright. First off, you should all know that there will indeed be ANBU surveillance for the whole of this mission. Their primary directive is to monitor _only_, so don't try to antagonize them, please." Minato shot a very pointed looked at Kakashi, who blinked innocently. "Of course, they will help if there's an emergency, but only if."

Minato made a motion with his hand and suddenly there were two men standing beside his desk. One had a bear mask; the other one only had a red pattern painted onto it. They had all the standard gear, though neither of them were cloaked.

"These two are Asakaze and Yuunagi," Minato introduced. They both bowed. "If you need to speak with them in an official capacity, be advised that Yuunagi is responsible for executive decisions." He gestured to the one with the bear mask.

"_Yoroshiku onegai shimasu_," the four members of Team 7 intoned, returning their bows.

They didn't have presences at all. As expected of ANBU; even when I concentrated my chakra sense I couldn't tell they were there. So these were direct subordinates of the ANBU Commander, one of Konoha's most powerful ninjas? I tilted my head at them, curious.

Asakaze remained standing ramrod straight, but Yuunagi rather cheekily mimicked me, cocking his head to the side as well. I was instantly grinning; too bad I couldn't tell if he copied that, too.

"Now, for the mission itself," Minato continued, ignoring our little exchange. "The daimyo has requested that a kunoichi of Konoha come to the capital and pose as a member of his court. A kunoichi specifically, because she would need to be someone one of his most prominent retainers could feasibly fall in love with."

My eyebrows flew up. This wasn't a seduction mission, was it? That was neither my training nor my jurisdiction.

"Don't worry, the retainer is in on the plan, too," Minato assured me when he caught my look. "He's a perfect gentleman. His name is Tatemaru, and I've done extensive work with him before. He's in charge of the palace's security."

I relaxed a bit. Well, that did make sense. Minato would probably never consent to me getting into bed with a stranger for a mission, even if it _were_ the sake of the village. Hell, he got antsy if I did so much as got a piggyback ride from a guy, and that was even if I was injured. The only male my age he _didn't _get worried about was Kakashi.

(No, I am _not_ thinking about the disaster mission with Tsubasa right now.)

"Why does he have to fall in love with someone?" I queried.

"Because someone is threatening him, and is doing so by targeting people close to him," Minato replied. "Over the past five years, be they just friends or actual lovers, the people who associate with Tatemaru have been gravely injured, forced away from the capital, or, in the case of his first fiance, killed. The daimyo fears that the person responsible may target someone more important next—Tatemaru's close associate Yaichi, perhaps, who is the head of the guard. Or the daimyo's personal physician Tomomitsu, who is also one of Tatemaru's friends."

Or perhaps even the daimyo himself, he didn't say.

"Is this person in a position to target any of those people?" Kakashi wondered. "Frankly, our daimyo is gullible. He might be overreacting to a series of unfortunate coincidences."

"They are not coincidences," Minato assured him. "Our agents in the capital agree—they were deliberate incidents. Several of our infiltrators have brought up similar concerns."

And the number of infiltrators we had in the government was extensive. I had been required to read briefs on the other missions going on in the palace—none of us wanted to end up causing complications for each other—so I knew for a fact that the capital was _swarming _with agents from Konoha. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if some of the daimyo's top advisors were Leaf-nin. That was probably the reason _why _we tolerated such an easily influenced leader, actually—it made him more controllable.

"Alright," Kakashi acquiesced. "But why is he asking now? Why didn't he request someone sooner?"

"Because Tatemaru has confessed that he may know who is responsible." Minato sat back in his chair and gave us all an assessing look. "Tell me, how much do you four know about the Land of Iron?"

We all exchanged glances, wondering where this tangent led. "Samurai," we answered.

"Yes, samurai." Minato nodded. "Now, do you know why the Fire Daimyo's palace guards all have samurai training?"

"Tatemaru is a rounin?" I asked, surprised. But then again, I probably shouldn't have been. It was common knowledge that the guards in the capital were mostly all samurai, and that when samurai left the Land of Iron, they often ended up in service to daimyo of countries big and small. Samurai had a strict honor code, so country governments were far more likely to hire them than rely on shinobi—even if they were shinobi from their own Hidden Villages. The recent coup incident with the Twelve Guardian Ninja came to mind. "Oh, don't tell me someone he knew from his days in Iron Country is trying to get revenge on him for leaving…"

"That is pretty much it," Minato chuckled. "He's not certain, but he thinks it is probably his former brother disciple Tetsurou. They both studied under the same master before Tatemaru left. From what I understand, Tatemaru disagreed with his master's instructions on a personal matter, one that involved a relationship… he didn't give many details, but he says he suspects Tetsurou is trying to punish him by attacking people he has formed new relationships with."

"Wouldn't that make him a rounin, too, though?" Rin pointed out, speaking up for the first time now. "That kind of behavior clearly doesn't comply with bushido, and I doubt his superiors in Tetsu no Kuni have approved this."

"It's likely he is," Minato shrugged. "But due to their impenetrable security, we have no spies and no insight into the inner workings of the Land of Iron. Given their past actions, it's probably safe to assume that he's acting independently, though."

"Hmm," I said. "So basically, the plan is to establish myself in the Fire Daimyo's court and maneuver myself into a position where I can interact with Tatemaru often, after which we'll pretend to become romantically involved. Then, when this Tetsurou targets me, we use the opportunity to locate and disable him, thus ensuring the safety of the daimyo's other retainers."

Minato beamed. "Excellent, Suzu."

"This _is _my promotion field," I replied a bit dryly.

"Anyway, Kakashi and Obito will openly accompany you as shinobi," Minato continued, waving a hand. "The story will be that your father hired them to look after you while you're away visiting the capital. Rin will pose as a servant of yours, in charge of looking after your health. I believe Intel slotted you two as childhood friends, so you won't have any need to act reserved around each other."

Despite all the worries I had about Rin coming along, this piece of news made my face split into a grin. Rin and I exchanged happy looks. It would also help that I would be able to keep an eye on her at all times.

"Kakashi and Obito, here is your fake mission scroll, in case anyone asks you to present it," Minato informed, holding out a green scroll marked with an B-rank's seal. Then he picked up a manila folder and handed it to Rin and me. "Here are more details on your covers. Make sure you all study these extensively."

"Yes, sir," we chorused, accepting our documents.

"We'll escort you out," Yuunagi told Obito when he made to leave, sounding all for the world like he was just a friendly guy offering a kind favor. Obito's gaze darkened.

"Let me tag along," Kakashi smoothly inserted. "We need to review that scroll."

Obito looked away when he came forward, turning his face to the side to conceal his expression. My immediately sharpened, and I watched silently as Kakashi's shoulders shifted—in worry? In disappointment? Clearly there was unease there. But before I could dissect the nuances of their interaction any further, they left.

I let my gaze linger on the emptied doorway before compartmentalizing, filing everything away to consider at a later date. I turned back to face Minato.

"How old is Tatemaru?" I asked. Minato blinked and made a thinking noise, carefully staring at a spot on the wall just past my head.

"Hmm... I'm not sure," he said after a moment, finally meeting my gaze again. He looked wary. "I think he's twenty-four or twenty-six."

That was a big age gap. Then again, in the feudal world outside of shinobi villages, where men and women often did not stand on equal ground, that did not matter much. Even more so among the rich.

"...Oh, well," I huffed out a breath, deciding that I just didn't want to worry about it right now. I didn't have the energy to pick a fight with the Hokage at this point, either. "If he's nice and a gentleman as you say, I'm sure we'll work something out."

"He's a very reasonable fellow," Minato assured me, looking a bit relieved.

And that was that. "So, Rin!" I exclaimed, promptly turning around and clapping my hands together brightly. Back to my more immediate problem. "Now that we have an excuse, want to go eat out while we look at that file?"

Rin smiled happily, clueless to the fact that she was currently a rope around my neck. "Of course. I _did_ say I would make it up to you."

Silently, I wondered if we had drifted to the point that she couldn't see through this bullshit smile. She was usually much more perceptive than that.

Perhaps I was getting a little _too_ good at my job.

* * *

**A/N: As I understand it, the saying **_**jinsei iroiro (**__**人生色々**__**) **_**means something to the effect of "many things happen in life" or "life is colorful," as in "sometimes people have unexpected backgrounds or do unexpected things." Or maybe just "stuff happens." Of course, if I'm mistaken, please let me know. I love hearing explanations of old Japanese sayings. They're so pithy and wise.**

**Asakaze and Yuunagi mean "morning wind" and "evening calm," respectively.**

**Anyway, here's a super-long chapter for you all. There was also a double update with the sidestories, too—one about Obito to go with the previous chapter, one about Kyouya to go with this one. Also, if you didn't know, I corrected Itachi's age from five to eight in the last chapter. Completely forgot to add the timeskip years to him xD.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	33. Age 16: Fire Country Court: Part 3

**Published: 12/17/2015**

* * *

"_Did you notice? Yuunagi dangled a dead fish over Niboshi's head when we left the audience hall."_

_"_What? _Where the hell did he get a fish from? Wait, no, _why_?"_

_"Why? Because his name is Niboshi, of course. What else would you do if you found out the daimyo's name was 'sardines'?"_

* * *

I was running checklists, frowning severely, when I heard a loud click. A flash of light went off in my periphery; I blinked and looked up. Auntie Reiko was standing by the couch, camera in hand, with a wistful smile on her face.

"You've grown up so much, Suzu," she said, backing up and clicking the shutter again. "And with your clothes... I just can't resist."

Setting down my papers, I smiled a bit wanly but didn't protest. Unlike on Earth, taking pictures in the Narutoverse was cumbersome and expensive; Auntie probably only broke out the camera a few times a year. A full-on silk kimono with furisode sleeves like the one I was wearing now was far more expensive then we could ever hope to afford on our own, so I couldn't really begrudge her.

"I'll make sure to show Souhei, okay?" she promised in response to my long-suffering face.

Uncle Souhei, actually, was not anywhere far away—just upstairs in the master bedroom. But about an hour ago we had caught him standing in a corner with his forehead pressed against the wall, looking rather like he was about to decorate it with his breakfast. With some goading, he confessed to us that he was having the worst migraine he'd had in forty years; that is to say, in his whole life. Or at least his whole life in the Narutoverse.

We had relocated him to the second floor and now he was desperately trying to sleep it off. Luckily for him everyone was already out at school or on a mission, so it was quiet.

"Does ojisan get migraines often?" I asked Auntie, setting down my brush now too. I'd never noticed them, but she might've.

"If he does, he's never told me," she replied, brow creasing. "But… you caught it too, didn't you? He looked like it's happened to him before."

So I wasn't imagining things. Well, maybe he really had gotten migraines when he'd lived on Earth. Maybe I'd ask him later.

"Kind of. But how would he hide it? I mean, he does leave the House every now and then—" and sometimes he stayed overnight at Kyouya's if there was something he needed "—but he's home pretty much as often as you are. Besides, he has no reason to."

Auntie Reiko hummed speculatively, but at that moment, the doorbell chose to ring. I flared my chakra and recognized the feel of Kakashi, Rin, and Obito outside. Well, I recognized Kakashi and Rin, anyway. I didn't know Obito quite so well, so I only had a hazy sense of what his chakra felt like.

"I think that means the mission is starting," I told her ruefully, blasting the ink on my checklists dry with wind chakra before folding them up and tucking them into the fold behind my obi. Auntie Reiko sighed and set down the camera before holding her arms open.

"Love you, sweetheart," she murmured as I came forward and gave her a hug. "...I know that you're trained for this, but the capital is a dangerous place in all sorts of ways. Even if you look past all of the intrigue and politicking, there are too many people who are spoiled by their privilege. It just makes me uncomfortable to know that you're playing bait… and I know you'll be good bait, Suzu, because you're a beautiful, talented kunoichi. Other people are going to take interest…"

"I won't be by myself," I told her quietly. "There's a full platoon on this mission, and we have ANBU watchers. Konoha has people in the capital. It's alright."

"Just be careful," she sighed again, planting a kiss on my forehead. "Play it safe."

"I will," I promised.

Since I had already packed all of my things—all of my gear had had to be hidden sneakily in assorted bits of supposedly civilian luggage—I went to the door just as I was, needing no further preparation. None except to grab a hand fan, anyway, because it was _hot_. Rin was standing on the porch; the boys were loitering in the street.

"You are a clever, clever person," I immediately told her. She was holding a wide oil-paper umbrella over her shoulder to block out the sun. She smiled.

"I'll share it with you if you share the fan with me," she proposed, seeing it clutched in my hand.

"Deal," I immediately agreed. She let me under the shade of the parasol, and I began fanning both of our faces. She looked like she was sweating to death as well. Her clothes weren't nearly as formal as mine, but kimono were kimono; I seriously hoped that they let us switch to yukata when we got done meeting with the daimyo, or I might be forced into doing something drastic.

"Ready, ladies?" Kakashi asked cheerfully when we came over to them, trying not to wilt despite being bundled in layers and layers of silk. Rin sighed; I gave him an evil look. Sure, go ahead and rub in the fact that you only have to wear your uniform, jerkwad.

"Your sacrifice is for the greater good," he told me gravely, reading my face. He bowed. "Thank you, Lady Kimura."

"You are _so_ full of shit," I muttered, punching him in the shoulder. He staggered a bit and winced; Obito looked away.

"So unrefined, Sanae-sama," Kakashi tsked at me disapprovingly, rubbing his arm. "Tatemaru will never fall in love with a brute like you."

Sanae Kimura, that was my cover name. Rice seedlings and tree village_._ There were at least fifty women with the exact same name living here in Konoha. Likely more.

"Let's just go," I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose and fanning a bit harder.

* * *

If you were a ninja, travel to the capital from Konoha took about three hours if you cut through the woodlands. Even less, if you were speed-specialized—my record run was two hours and two minutes, and Minato's, I knew, was a mere hour and a half. But civilians had neither the knowledge nor the authority to veer off into Konoha's controlled forests; all commercial, non-shinobi traffic to and from the Hidden Leaf was restricted to a path that was very, _very_ heavily monitored from all directions. Trespassers were mercilessly prosecuted so none dared to try straying from the main road. Sanae Kimura's journey from her hometown of Konoha to the capital of Fire Country, therefore, was going to take the better part of the day.

Luckily, Rin and I were "ladies," so we got to ride in a carriage. Not a fancy closed one with a door, granted, just a regular horse-drawn cart. With that said, though, the Equipments office had made sure it was a handsome one. Perfect for a well-to-do merchant's daughter: not ostentatious like a noble's, but well-made and well-decorated enough to show wealth. The driver helped us both up onto it, and we sat in front of the luggage on a cloth-padded seats.

(The driver was also a shinobi. He had undercover work in the capital as well, though it was completely unrelated to mine, and this was a convenient way for him to enter the city in a low-key manner.)

After we confirmed that the ANBU in the trees were ours—you never knew with ANBU, they were always everywhere for every conceivable reason—we exchanged respectful nods with the gate guards and set off. Kakashi and Obito took up their positions alongside the wagon; Obito, of course, made sure that he was on Rin's side. I tried to catch his gaze, just to check if everything was to rights, but he refused to do so much as glance at me.

The blatant show of avoidance had me turning to Kakashi. "Obito is not going to make this easy, is he?" I sighed, already feeling the troubles begin to mount. He was doing his best to earn back the village's trust, I knew, but I guess flawless cooperation was just too much to ask.

Kakashi—who was reading as usual—checked to make sure neither of our teammates were listening before he lowered his book and let out a sigh of his own. "It's not that he dislikes you as a person, per se," he replied, voice equally soft. "I don't think so, anyway. But he's… wary of you. He's wary of me, too. He's wary of everyone."

"Even of Rin?" I asked, sneaking a surreptitious glance over at them. Though they had initially been silent when we'd set off, they were now talking quietly, faces turned to one another.

"Especially of Rin," Kakashi replied quietly. "Obito doesn't even trust himself at this point. The longer I watch him, the more convinced I become that he's afraid she's a hallucination."

"So he thinks it's all in his head," I murmured, resting my chin on my hand. "More than that, he's afraid he's gone back on his resolve for the wrong reason. After all, he came back looking to destroy us and take the Kyuubi; now he's here trying to win back Konoha's favor."

"Got it in one." Kakashi tiredly massaged his neck.

Obito's issues would have been enough on their own, but with Rin added to the mix, this squad was just an aneurysm waiting to burst. I resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of my nose. I had a high-profile, no-errors-tolerated infiltration to run here. How in the world was I expected to make this disaster waiting to happen work? It was like placing someone next to a leaky gas valve and telling her to strike a match after forbidding loud noises.

This time Kakashi and I heaved our sighs in unison. Team 7 was such a mess.

"Something wrong?" Rin asked me curiously, pausing in her conversation to glance at us. Obito looked away before we could make eye contact.

"Just commiserating about the mission parameters," I told her, suddenly feeling too wearied to give her anything but a half-truth. "...But there's a lot of stuff I shouldn't talk about. Don't let it trouble you."

Rin gave me a sympathetic look. Normally, she might have offered to lend and ear, but she only told me, "Do your best. I'm sure it'll work out."

Kakashi and I found ourselves trading looks when she turned away again, eyebrows rising. That was... uncharacteristically blasé of her. I mean, it wasn't uncharitable in the least, and I didn't expect her to fall all over me and ask me to confess my woes, but that response wasn't very… _Rin_. Somehow I thought she'd be more concerned. I found myself repressing the urge to frown.

Captains sometimes got a sensation clinically known as an extremely awful _bad feeling_. It often came after finding out that the mission outlook was ten types of terrible, usually in the form a vague premonition.

I found myself deciding then that when things went wrong it was going to be because of this impossibly dysfunctional team. Nothing had happened yet, but the friction I was feeling was undeniable. It was a slow, quiet grind, but it was a grind nonetheless.

But what could I do? I steepled my fingers and shut my eyes, dropping my fan in my lap.

Nothing came to mind.

* * *

The pretense of Sanae's visit was that she, the daughter of a man who had recently made a very favorable trade of high-quality ceramics with the daimyo, had been invited to the capital to take part in a banquet that was being held on said tableware. Her father, however, was unable to attend due to a complicated business deal, and had sent his daughter to enjoy the daimyo's hospitality instead. After all, snubbing the ruler of Fire Country would probably damage his business more than any deal gone awry could. Being a gracious man, the daimyo had taken the gesture in good grace and decided that Sanae would be a guest of honor.

"I will never understand nobles." I shook my head. "I mean, I think I can get holding a party to show off your new dinnerware. And I understand that every party the daimyo throws ends up being a big deal no matter what the occasion is. But why would you make someone a guest of honor over _plates_?"

Everyone around me shrugged, even the driver. Ninjas were open-minded, versatile people, but it seemed that even we would never truly be able to comprehend the inner workings of rich people's minds. As the guards at the palace gate opened the doors and let us pull into the courtyard, though, I shoved those thoughts from my mind and got into character, doing all the things like sitting up straight and lowering my chin and fanning myself at a more delicate pace.

"Lady Kimura!" A man was instantly in front of us, bowing lowly. I resisted the urge to raise my eyebrows. Judging by his clothes, this was no regular footman; in fact, I decided as I thought back to all the of the reading I had done on the members of the daimyo's household, this was probably his seneschal.

I considered him thoughtfully. A bit much for a simple merchant's daughter, but it could be excused with all the trappings of "guest of honor." Still, this was going to garner some raised eyebrows...

"We have been eagerly awaiting your arrival, Lady Kimura," the seneschal continued as the driver hopped off his seat and turned to help me and Rin get down from the carriage like proper dainty flowers. "Please, let me offer my lord's sincerest tidings of welcome. We are honored to have you as a guest here."

"Please, call me Sanae," I told him, putting on my poshest accent as I took the driver's hand and stepped lightly to the ground. "Lady Kimura is much too formal. I insist that we establish a friendlier rapport."

Though Rin and Obito's expressions were perfectly schooled, Kakashi began making the most ridiculous face at me. No one could see it because of his mask, of course, so just I glanced at him primly and said nothing.

"Lady Sanae," the our greeter corrected himself, smiling pleasantly. "Please, won't you come inside? It is a long journey from Konoha. You must be exhausted after travelling all day."

"Thank you," I replied. After tossing a tip to our pretend driver and parting ways for our separate missions, I allowed myself to be led inside. I had to admit, it felt a little strange to have my friends following after me like an entourage—no, technically they _were _an entourage—with two ANBU ghosting after us. One of them was trailing behind us; he must've been ducking around corners and walls, though it was beyond me how he was doing it in broad daylight. Even if it _was_ early evening, after all, there was still plenty of sun. The other one, I think, was on the roof above us. Japanese palaces often had hallways that opened up to gardens on the interior, so he could easily jump down and get to us if he needed to.

"Lord Niboshi is meeting with members of his court at the moment, but he has been anxious to see you," the seneschal, who had introduced himself as Daigo, told me. "He instructed me to see you to him as soon as you arrived. He is right this way."

This guy was almost definitely in on the plan, I thought but didn't say. Instead, I beamed and put on my best hopeful face. "My father wanted very much to give his greetings to the daimyo," I replied. "I'm honored that I can do it in his place."

When we were seen inside, four or five men were arranged in rows in front of a man with a large hat. He was sitting in seiza on a very ostentatious cushion. Though I gave them all cursory glances, immediately I found my gaze honing in on the gaggle of ladies in the corner. They glanced at me over their shoulders and almost immediately began smiling and whispering to one another behind their hands, rife with giggles.

Well, _that _was going to be fun…

"Announcing the arrival of Sanae Kimura of Konoha, milord," Daigo said, standing in the doorway before bowing and moving to the side, waving me in. I walked forward, trying to strike a balance between confident and confrontational. If I was going to be stuck hanging around here for several months I had to make sure I didn't start any fights I couldn't finish.

"Oh, wonderful," the daimyo said, clapping his hands together. It was about nine years before Naruto the series would have started, so his skin wasn't sagging yet—he was still relatively young-looking. "Lady Sanae, I have been waiting for you. Tell me, how was your journey? Your father—how is he? How is his latest trade proceeding?"

I folded my hands in front of me and bowed deeply, Kakashi and Obito and Rin following suit. "Milord, I give my sincerest of thanks for your welcome and your kind concern," I said warmly, though I took care not to sound _too _soupy. "The weather was hot, but the journey was smooth and there were no complications. As for my father, he is of good health. Currently he is meeting with several advisors to gather the resources for the order—it is quite large and he says he must pick his suppliers carefully."

"Yes, yes, very good," the daimyo said dismissively, gaze intent, before waving at the others in the room. "You all, you may go. I have business I must attend to," he declared, making a shooing motion. "Daigo, see them out, please."

Daigo immediately got to work. The courtiers and advisors hopped to, and the was much bowing and scraping as they excused themselves. Then, after waiting a few seconds for the audience hall to empty, we arranged ourselves in ranks and gave stiffer, more military-styled bows—Rin and I kept our hands at our sides. Our ANBU watchers appeared out of nowhere and positioned themselves at our flanks.

"We give our greetings, Lord Niboshi," I said formally, straightening up again. "We are the squad from Konoha. I am Misuzu Namikaze, the head of this operation, and this is my team. Kakashi Hatake is my partner—" I gestured to Kakashi, who inclined his head, "—and Obito Uchiha and Rin Nohara will be assisting." Rin and Obito both bowed again.

"And who are they?" Niboshi inquired, forgoing a response to our greetings in favor of pointing at Asakaze and Yuunagi. "I didn't request for any of your Black Ops people to come."

"They are our surveillance," I replied. "This is a very crucial mission. Hokage-sama did not wish to take any chances, milord." I offered neither their names nor what their actual purpose here was, but luckily for us, Niboshi was too self-absorbed to even consider that they were here for any other reason than the one he had requested. Oh, if only he knew how many of us were slithering about his gardens… Did he even have a clue?

"Very good, then." Niboshi sat back, looking satisfied with this. "Wait a moment. I've sent for Tatemaru; he should be here soon."

I was not swelling my chakra enough to have my usual sensing range—it was a precaution, because even if any of the ninja here wouldn't rat me out, we knew that samurai could use chakra and it was possible Tetsurou was a sensor too—so I wasn't able to feel the head of palace guard until he entered the room. When he did, though, I almost thought he was a jounin, so bright was his chakra.

"Milord." Tatemaru, dressed in formal kimono and hakama, bowed before entering. His hair was long, brown, and gathered into a high ponytail. "Ah… are these the ninja?"

"They are," Niboshi confirmed. "You lot, introduce yourselves again."

What Tatemaru must have thought of us I hadn't a clue. Rin politely bowed and stated her name and rank, but Obito kind of flatly just said "Obito Uchiha" and Kakashi didn't even bother to give him his full name—just "Hatake." It was a great first impression, I was sure.

"Misuzu Namikaze," I told him when it was my turn. And, because I decided that we probably didn't want to be _too _standoffish, I held out a hand to shake as a sign of goodwill. Hesitantly, he reached out and took it.

"Namikaze… are you family of Minato Namikaze's?" he asked tentatively. I very deliberately did not raise my eyebrows. Well, it seemed Minato hadn't been lying after all; it looked like they really had done extensive work together.

"Yes," I confirmed. "Hokage-sama is my—brother."

"Is he well?" Tatemaru smiled a bit, looking a little happy to have found a conversational foothold. "I remember him very well. He was a pleasure to work with."

"He is," I said. Though I tried not to be, I was perhaps a little cool in my reply; Tatemaru's smile flattened. Oops.

"I see," he murmured after a moment of silence. Then he took on a bit of an awkward look. "...I suppose you are the kunoichi I was told about? The one who specializes in, ah, deception?"

What a polite fellow. A bit of an amused smile began to form on my lips, but I smothered most of it—it would not do to have him think I was making fun of him. After all, we were going to be spending significant amounts of time together from here on. "All ninja use deception," I informed instead. "But yes. I am an infiltration specialist; for this mission, my name will be Sanae Kimura."

"Kimura-sama, then," Tatemaru murmured.

"Sanae," I corrected. "Be a little less distant; I'm going for the friendly, sociable type. I'll get farther faster that way."

Tatemaru looked troubled. "Sanae…" he began, and then shook his head stubbornly. "Kimura-sama," he said firmly. "I cannot use your given name so flippantly."

I put my elbow in my hand and pressed my other over my mouth, this time completely unable to hide my grin. What a gent! He couldn't even bring himself to use my fake first name.

"Very well, then," I said once I finally got my face under control. "If it's not in your nature to speak familiarly with people, I won't force you. To act out of character would raise suspicion, after all."

Tatemaru went from firm to floundering in the space of a moment. "I am not a good actor," he confessed, grimacing. "I fear I will give away this entire masquerade."

I gave him an assessing look. Well, between the two of us, he was definitely the weaker link here. It was quite possible for him to bungle the whole operation if we didn't approach this carefully. I doubted I could give him advice on how to act romantic, either; he was definitely the professional type. PDA was not going to be an option here.

"Well, just be yourself, and it'll all work out," I laughed, waving a hand in an attempt to put him at ease. "I'm a clever kunoichi, and figuring out this sort of situation is my job. The best thing you can do is to behave as you usually do. For now, treat me as you would any woman visiting Lord Niboshi's court; we can discuss the rest after I've established myself here."

Tatemaru looked a little relieved. "As you say," he said, inclining his head. As his gaze turned toward the ground, I looked over his shoulder and caught eyes with Kakashi. He raised his eyebrow and gave me his best unimpressed look.

I made an effort not to snort. Well, Kakashi was also a decent actor. Worse come to worst, we could stuff Tatemaru into a closet and have Kakashi take his place.

"I don't like the face you're making right now," he said lowly to me after Tatemaru had straightened and turned back to the daimyo. "Whatever you're plotting, leave me out of it."

"A good ninja always has a plan B, Kakashi," I replied blithely. "I'm just thinking ahead."

I received a rather unamused stare in reply.

"You're a good shinobi. I know you'll do what you have to to get the mission done, won't you?" I allowed myself the tiniest of smirks; Kakashi just gave me a disdainful look. "Well, if all goes well, you won't need to act. I'll let you know."

"Please don't," he muttered.

Too bad it never actually happened. I think Kakashi would have been happy to impersonate Tatemaru had he known what sort of plots the members of the daimyo's court would turn out for us; at least then he might have been nearby to stop them.

* * *

**A/N: I have a question. How would one refer to Niboshi in Japanese? Would he be Niboshi-sama or Niboshi-dono? Do we call him tono? Daimyo-sama? What?**

**Side note: was rewatching the ANBU Kakashi filler and just came up with the cutest headcanon. You know how near the end Kakashi gets surprised when he's greeted by the first set of students he failed? He's rather polite when he responds to them since he says "hai" instead of something like "un" or "hm." Even though he pretends to be a rude and lazy bastard all the time, it seems that if you catch him off guard, he responds to you in keigo—that is, he drops the mask briefly and you can see his personality unfiltered. Am I the only one who finds that to be an incredibly endearing little detail? Granted, I might just be reading way too much into things, but it's just so cute to imagine that Kakashi thinks in keigo by default.**

**That or Japanese people are just automatically polite when you scare them. But tl;dr Kakashi is classy, he just doesn't want you to know it. I love this guy.**

**Anyway, sorry for the long wait. It's that time of year… what can I say? I felt pretty bad for leaving you guys hanging so long, though, so I did a little bit of blog-posting with some Glory-relevant stuff. It wasn't much, but I hoped it would tide you all over… and then I realized that about 98% of you probably don't even know the blog is a thing. Oops. So yeah, _eiruiel dot wordpress dot com_: it exists. I linked it in my profile, too, even though links don't appear to be working.**

**Thanks for reading! **

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	34. Notice: One More Try

"I guess that makes try three a bust," Suzu sighs, dropping the scribble-riddled manuscript into the bottom drawer.

"You knew you wouldn't get it on the first try anyway," Jiraiya points out with a shrug. "Nothing you can do but rewrite it. It was like that when I working on Gutsy Ninja, too."

Suzu sighs again as she pulls out a fresh stack of paper and flips her pen back into her hand. "Well," she says, blowing at her bangs exasperatedly, "I guess it's time to start over again."

* * *

Thanks for all of your support. The first chapter of _Glory Rewritten_ is now available for viewing.


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